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I'm in for 31. I'm going to try to focus on folk horror, witch movies, and horror with rural settings. I'll also be watching some new releases, organizing a couple of movie nights with friends, and going to local horror screenings (including a film festival that anyone in central NC should check out). I made a long rear end list of folk, rural, and witchy horror movies to pull from if anyone's going for a similar theme. https://letterboxd.com/deety/list/to-watch-folk-rural-horror/
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Sep 27, 2019 20:03
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Darthemed posted:A few too many filler scenes to pad out the run-time; again, if it had been trimmed down to more of a claustrophobic focus on the doctor's obsession with his patient, this could have really been something striking. For all my moping about how it could have been improved, it's not that bad, and while the neat touches draw out the dullness of the lesser portions, they also show that there were some good ideas behind the film. It's just that they happened to end up smothered. This movie sounds like someone chucked a bunch of extra nonsense into Eyes Without a Face, so if you haven't seen that one yet, you may want to try it. edit: I just looked this up and apparently both movies came out in the same year? Wild. deety fucked around with this message at 23:34 on Sep 28, 2019 |
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Sep 28, 2019 23:29
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blood_dot_biz posted:Also, I've had the song "Santa Baby" running compulsively through my head all week only with the word "Spider" standing in for "Santa", so I'm hoping now that I've finally watched this one my brain will let me rest. Just in case anyone wants a different Spider Baby earworm, a band from my area wrote a song about that movie. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P31OsgIis1I
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Sep 29, 2019 14:10
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 1. Burn, Witch, Burn (1962) I put this one on my watch list based entirely on the strength of that title, so I didn’t realize until sitting down with it that it’s one of the movies based on Fritz Leiber’s Conjure Wife. From what I remember of the novel, this adaptation follows its premise fairly well. The first few minutes, in which an invisible narrator reads us a protective incantation, are a great intro to the story. The main character is Norman, a popular college professor who, when he learns that his wife Tansy has been secretly working magic to protect him and support his career, demands that she burn all her witchy poo poo. When she reluctantly agrees, everything starts going wrong. He faces false accusations at work, an attack from a surly student, and some kind of ghostly door knocker that Tansy dispels by unplugging the phone. After she tries to redirect the curse onto herself, Norman has a close call with a giant eagle and realizes that maybe he doesn’t know everything after all. I liked Janet Blair as Tansy, and the few effects scenes were decent for the era, too. I also liked that they played it straight instead of leaning in on the potential humor. The movie did get a little too caught up in Norman running around calling for Tansy or running through campus in the second half though. I wish they’d have spent that time either developing the secondary characters or giving us more insight on the magical elements of the setting. My only real beef other than that was the ending. Having the antagonist accidentally hex herself was fine, but I wish Norman or Tansy had a little more of a hand in that instead of “whoops, I hit the wrong button on the evil lecture tape.” I also seem to remember the book presenting witchcraft as something that was a quiet but fairly common practice among women, but since the movie says Tansy picked it up after seeing voodoo on their travels, having another witchy faculty wife makes that ending a bit more random. Watching this made me pretty interested in seeing a more current take on the story. Watched: 1. Burn, Witch, Burn (1962)
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Sep 29, 2019 21:15
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 2. TerrorVision (1986) My original plan for the night was to put on another witch movie, but my husband suggested a horror comedy instead. As someone who didn’t start watching horror until he was older, he has no Empire Pictures nostalgia. So I don’t think he had as good a time with this as I did. The overall story is kind of dumb, but that doesn’t necessarily bother me when a movie has this much style. The 80s touches are so exaggerated that it could almost pass for a more recent movie that's shooting for a throwback feel. The hair, the clothes, and the house’s sex palace decor all make for exactly the kind of world that you want a tentacled toad-puppy from outer space to rampage through. And having the kids' only hope of a rescue get killed by a drunk horror host because they'd been in a hurry to cash in made for a great ending. Most of my memories of TerrorVision were about the kids trying to teach and then fight the monster. I’d completely forgotten just how sleazy some of the rest of it is though. The swinging subplot is funny enough, but it also limits who I’d recommend this to. It’s a little too kiddish for some of my friends but not child-friendly enough to suggest to the parents looking for entry level horror to show their tweens. It would probably go over best as a group watch, especially if alcohol is involved. Although even then, I’m not sure I’d pick TerrorVision unless we’d already watched The Stuff and Night of the Comet together. Watched: 1. Burn, Witch, Burn (1962) 2. TerrorVision (1986)
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Oct 1, 2019 05:11
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 SUPER SAMHAIN CHALLENGE #1: The Best Month  3. Evilspeak (1981) Viy would be an overall better fit for my folk/witchy horror plan, but that one was already on my list for this month so I decided to choose something I wouldn’t have watched otherwise. Evilspeak looks like the kind of movie that should be a great fit for me. It’s got 80s cheese, vintage computer nonsense, weird murders, and some creative scenes. But I also couldn’t get into it at all. I had a really hard time connecting to Stanley, the teen bullying victim played by Clint Howard. Howard sometimes stands out too much to me, but in this case, that wasn’t really an issue. He’s totally believable as a hapless orphan that the cool kids want to punch. I think my biggest problem with Stanley is that he just wasn’t written very well. This movie seems to get compared to Carrie a lot, but the similarities are superficial. Carrie White’s story is about her attempt to reach out of her social comfort zone. Stanley, on the other hand, just wants to lurk in his computer dungeon with his new pal, Satan. He spends the whole movie ignoring the one friend he has, and the staffer who’s kind to him is really just around to kick off part of the plot. Things move along pretty slowly right up until the first moment in the movie when I felt what Stanley was feeling. The aftermath of that awful goddamn scene was wild, though maybe a little too long. I liked the overall vibe and the ridiculous blend of computers and magic, but some of the technical elements, like the bad lighting, kept throwing me. (For example, I was distracted during one big moment by watching the characters go from normal looking to weirdly pale as they moved through the frame.) Overall, Evilspeak falls short enough of its potential that I don’t think I’d recommend it. Watched: 1. Burn, Witch, Burn (1962) 2. TerrorVision (1986) 3. Evilspeak (1981) - Challenge #1
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Oct 2, 2019 07:05
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 4. Blood on Satan’s Claw (1971) Along with The Wicker Man and Witchfinder General, Blood on Satan’s Claw is considered one of the folk horror greats. I get why it earned that reputation, but I had mixed feelings about this one. It starts with a farmhand’s disturbing discovery, which gets brushed off for of a couple of scenes about an upper class man whose mother is less than thrilled about his marriage plans. This well-off family isn’t important though, and we don’t get any resolution of their struggles. The movie jitters like that from subplot to subplot, from truant kids to gleeful murders, and from inept local officials to a regional authority who explains that the town will just have to wait and let a bunch of nasty poo poo go down until he decides he’s ready to sort things out. The whole thing seems disjointed at times because it’s not really about any one particular story. It’s more about how a small community can fall into madness under the wrong influence. It’s an ambitious approach, and I'm not sure it's entirely successful. There are the seeds of a ton of great ideas here. Unfortunately the movie doesn't elaborate on them. If it had more focus, it could dip more deeply into themes about religious dogma, social structures, or political corruption. Instead it just wanders around making a point about the randomness of evil. Blood on Satan's Claw certainly sets a mood, but I thought it had some pacing issues. Some of the more horrific scenes are also too dark or too abrupt to be clear. I was surprised at how mean it was, even by the standards of a subgenre that regularly involves human sacrifice. There’s sexual violence as well as some body horror, and one moment that keeps coming back to me for some reason involves a teen cultist taunting a woman who doesn't know that her son has just been killed. It's probably a must-watch for folk horror fans, but I'd only recommend it to others if you're in the mood for meandering and atmospheric. Watched: 1. Burn, Witch, Burn (1962); 2. TerrorVision (1986); 3. Evilspeak (1981) - Challenge #1; 4. Blood on Satan’s Claw (1971)
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Oct 3, 2019 04:15
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 5. The City of the Dead (1960) This one gets rolling right at the start with a classic witch burning scene. The dying witch curses the town and swears she’ll perform more sacrifices, and then we switch to Christopher Lee enthusiastically sharing her story. He’s giving a college lecture series on witchcraft, and one of his students, Nan, decides to do research in the town he was talking about despite the objections of her brother and her obnoxious boyfriend. Most of the locals are less than friendly, but the reverend’s granddaughter lets her borrow an old book that seems to have the kind of information she’s looking for. Then some strange things happen, and Nan gets firsthand experience with things she’s been studying. First of all, this is a really nice-looking movie. (The quality of it on Amazon Prime sucks, so go with the Tubi version if you’re interested.) It has some interesting shots as well as a crisp style that works well both for the college scenes and the misty streets of the cursed town. The story is darker and twistier than I expected, with a Psycho-style heroine swap after Nan’s murdered by the witch cult. Christopher Lee carries a supporting role with his usual intensity, and I was also impressed with Patricia Jessel, who plays a witch that sometimes masquerades as a barely hospitable inkeeper. I liked this one a lot and would recommend it to anyone who’s looking for a movie from the era or who wants something atmospheric and relatively mild to break up a streak of heavier stuff. Watched: 1. Burn, Witch, Burn (1962); 2. TerrorVision (1986); 3. Evilspeak (1981) - Challenge #1; 4. Blood on Satan’s Claw (1971); 5. The City of the Dead (1960)
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Oct 5, 2019 05:41
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 6. The Witches (1966) I enjoyed the first hour of The Witches as much as anything I’ve watched recently. Joan Fontaine stars as Gwen Mayfield, a teacher who takes a job in the English countryside after a harrowing experience in Africa. (The opening “witch doctor” scene is stereotypical but mercifully short.) Miss Mayfield is warmly welcomed by her new community, but she’s a pretty lovely teacher by modern standards. She ignores a case of child abuse, acts as if some extra evening tutoring would help a gifted blue-collar kid just as much as an all expenses paid transfer to a more advanced school, and creates a play with barely any parts for the female half of her class because “hardly any girls invented anything.” So gently caress you very much to Miss Mayfield. Since Joan Fontaine is so goddamn charming though, her character manages to be sympathetic even when she leaves me gritting my teeth. Strange things begin to happen that leave Miss Mayfield wondering if the locals are practicing witchcraft. She wanders around loudly sharing her suspicions with everyone, and unfortunately she’s not the only one who pays the price of her lack of discretion. After that the movie goes into a fairly sharp dive. First there’s an amnesia plot. I almost always loving hate those, and in this case it feels like a way to squeeze fifteen more minutes into the runtime. Then there’s a pretty cool reveal, but much of the cult poo poo that follows takes the form of silly, overacted interpretive dance. At the end it’s implied that Miss Mayfield is being romanced by the anguished fake priest that gave her the job, but that guy was, while not in on the cult, still planning to stand by and angst while his sister murdered a teenager. Not exactly partner of the year material. That uneven ending really is a shame, because otherwise The Witches is a fun movie that nails that Hammer style without being overly gothic or even supernatural. In fact, if you’re willing to accept one big coincidence (or maybe just believe in the power of positive thinking), there’s some ambiguity about whether these people are really witches at all. I liked that there were a couple of genuinely disturbing scenes despite the low body count, and I was also a fan of a particularly memorable sheep stampede.  7. The Crimson Cult (1968) An antiques dealer named Bob goes looking for his missing brother in a remote village that’s been allegedly cursed by the witch who was burned there. We start out with a dreamlike scene where the missing man is menaced by a group of people who are either Satan’s minions or outcasts from some weird S&M LARP. When Bob arrives to investigate, he runs into someone’s embarrassing idea of a wild, sexy party. Apparently the director just wanted to run off the prudes because the budding orgy disbands to go light some fireworks and the devil’s dungeon crew don’t become much of a focus. Bob ends up staying in the house his brother may have visited along with Christopher Lee and his mod-girl niece, and after the niece makes a horror movie joke about Boris Karloff popping up, whelp. Then that happens. Karloff and Lee’s shared scenes are one of the few highlights of the movie; the biggest other point in its favor is Barbara Steele’s glam-rear end witch design. There’s a stupid echo effect on Steele’s voice though, and she isn’t given much to do, which contributes to my overall feel of The Crimson Cult being a sad waste of good actors. The rambling plot does little to hold things together, and Bob ranges from uninteresting to intolerable. It was nice to see Karloff sometimes put him in his place. There is one decent surprise at the end, but it feels arbitrary. Watched: 1. Burn, Witch, Burn (1962); 2. TerrorVision (1986); 3. Evilspeak (1981) - Challenge #1; 4. Blood on Satan’s Claw (1971); 5. The City of the Dead (1960); 6. The Witches (1966); 7. The Crimson Cult (1968)
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Oct 7, 2019 05:52
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SUPER SAMHAIN CHALLENGE #2: Dead & Buried  8. A Return to Salem’s Lot (1987) Larry Cohen’s in-name-only sequel to Tobe Hooper’s adaptation of Stephen King’s ‘Salem’s Lot gets a bad rap. If you look this movie up online, you’ll see it torn to shreds by people who were hoping for the direct follow-up that the trailers and the box art suggested. That’s fair, but personally I find the full original miniseries to be a tedious slog, so I don’t really get wanting more of it. (The shorter cut of the miniseries is much better but difficult to find.) If you go into Return looking for a Larry Cohen movie rather than a Stephen King one, there’s a lot to love. It’s starts off a bit restrained for a Cohen film. We meet the main character, Joe, while he’s filming a human sacrifice as part of his anthropological research. He’s dragged out of the jungle and forced to take charge of his son, Jeremy, who he hasn’t seen in years. The two head for a house that Joe inherited in a tiny town called Salem’s Lot. When I said this was an in-name-only sequel, I wasn’t kidding. This totally new version of Salem’s Lot has a different backstory and a different cast of characters. It also serves a different purpose, because Cohen’s setting leads Joe and Jeremy to struggle with issues of moral relativism pushed on them by the town’s vampire inhabitants. The vamps challenge Joe to engage with their customs and reconsider his own perspective, which left me briefly curious about what the students from Midsommar would have made of a visit to that blood dairy. Even if someone didn’t already know that Salem’s Lot = vampires, that reveal wouldn’t be much of a spoiler because the vampires show themselves right away. They want Joe, a trained anthropologist, to write a book about them in hopes of eventually presenting themselves in a positive way to the outside world. Joe’s conscious of the danger to his son, but he’s also caught up in professional curiosity as well as memories of his earlier visit to the town, especially after reuniting with his teenage fling who still (disgustingly enough) looks the same age that she did when they first met. The vampires put on their best faces for Joe and Jeremy, launching a careful propaganda campaign about how their ways are just different than humans are used to. They present themselves as practical New Englanders and even proud Americans, which some of the characters are rightfully skeptical of. The movie is a bit slow in places, and a couple of the actors are iffy enough to be a distraction. But Michael Moriarty works out well in the lead role, and the three older vampires are all delightful. Samuel Fuller plays a nazi killer who steals every scene he’s crops up in. Some aspects of the rest of it could have been better, but it’s twisty, funny, and touches on interesting themes beyond the obvious moral quandaries. For example, I loved that the vampires brag about not taking a penny from the government as if that’s a sign of thrift and virtue, but later they explain that their unnatural lifespans give them a leg-up on building wealth. So yeah, of course they don't need government assistance when the system so clearly benefits them. It’s just one of the many times their appearance doesn’t line up with reality. The part of the ending when a chastened Jeremy stakes the lead vampire with the end of a flagpole and we watch the creature's remains crumble beneath the red and white stripes of Old Glory is easily among the top vamp deaths of the 80s. Watched: 1. Burn, Witch, Burn (1962); 2. TerrorVision (1986); 3. Evilspeak (1981) - Challenge #1; 4. Blood on Satan’s Claw (1971); 5. The City of the Dead (1960); 6. The Witches (1966); 7. The Crimson Cult (1968); 8. A Return to Salem’s Lot (1987) - Challenge #2 deety fucked around with this message at 06:33 on Oct 8, 2019 |
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Oct 8, 2019 06:28
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 9. Next of Kin (1982) I caught a local screening of this last night, and it’s exactly the kind of movie that I’m grateful to have seen for the first time on the big screen. It’s got a distinctive style that looks heavily inspired by Argento and Bava without feeling like too much of a flat-out imitation. And while Next of Kin’s story moves more slowly than you’d get from some of its influences, I think that works. It’s about a woman named Linda who inherits the mansion that her late mother turned into a nursing home. When strange things happen in the house, Linda wonders what secrets her mother was keeping. The early stages of this one kept me wondering about just what kind of movie it was supposed to be. Were we dealing with ghosts or some malicious prankster? Or was Linda just seeing things that weren’t really there? I liked that uncertainty more than I might have guessed. The payoff, when it arrives, manages to be both ridiculous and satisfying. Next of Kin doesn’t bother tying up all its loose ends, but it’s hard to care once that long, atmospheric setup explodes into action. Linda finds one last clue and then goes for help, which is a surprisingly reasonable decision for a horror movie. But she doesn’t quite stop and put the pieces together. Everything after that moment works so well that it’s easy to recommend this for anyone interested in pretty, slow-burn horror. Watched: 1. Burn, Witch, Burn (1962); 2. TerrorVision (1986); 3. Evilspeak (1981) - Challenge #1; 4. Blood on Satan’s Claw (1971); 5. The City of the Dead (1960); 6. The Witches (1966); 7. The Crimson Cult (1968); 8. A Return to Salem’s Lot (1987) - Challenge #2; 9. Next of Kin (1982)
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Oct 9, 2019 03:57
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 10. The Ritual (2017) After spending the entire month so far watching 60s-80s horror, I decided to dig into some of the more recent movies on my list. The Ritual follows a group of friends who, while on a hike in the Swedish wilderness, decide to take a shortcut through the forest instead of staying on their established route. A solid backstory helps it rise above that lost-in-the-woods premise, and while the middle could have been tightened a bit, the ending works well. I will say that I wish more of these kinds of movies gave us at least a small glimpse of the aftermath. I left The Ritual wondering if the survivor tells his whole, crazy tale and if so, how it was taken by authorities. That would have taken more time though, and it would have been tricky to keep interesting. The horror elements are exactly what I want out of this kind of story, with a good mix of actual scares and the spooky atmosphere. I liked that even once I thought I had a handle on what was going on, there were still a couple of effective surprises. The biggest weakness, for me, was that the characters felt a bit flat. Considering how small the cast was, I expected a little more on that front. They aren’t badly written; each one has a role in the group and a couple of distinguishing traits. There just wasn’t much depth there beyond their collective trauma. Overall, I’d say I liked this but didn’t love it. Watched: 1. Burn, Witch, Burn (1962); 2. TerrorVision (1986); 3. Evilspeak (1981) - Challenge #1; 4. Blood on Satan’s Claw (1971); 5. The City of the Dead (1960); 6. The Witches (1966); 7. The Crimson Cult (1968); 8. A Return to Salem’s Lot (1987) - Challenge #2; 9. Next of Kin (1982); 10. The Ritual (2017)
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Oct 9, 2019 19:15
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SUPER SAMHAIN CHALLENGE #3: Horror Noire   11. Def by Temptation (1990) This is shockingly good for something that was released by Troma. I’m not trying to knock Troma here, because they’ve given me plenty of solid entertainment over the years. But a lot of their movies have this sense that they were put together for fun, a little bit of cash, and some filmmaking experience. Def By Temptation feels more like a passion project. It’s about a temptress demon who sets her sights on Joel, a sheltered ministry student who’s come to New York to reunite with K, his childhood friend. Things out start a little slow, and it took me a bit to figure out that all the Samuel L. Jackson scenes are flashbacks. The demon is active enough to keep things interesting even during the setup though, and there are some fun twists in the second half. I loved when the sad guy who has no luck with women turns out to be a federal agent trying to clear a case for a supernatural task force. K (Kadeem Hardison) and Joel (the movie’s director, James Bond III) have a great sense of chemistry, and their friendship is the movie’s emotional center. Unfortunately that proves to be a bit of a drawback when K’s attempt to save his friend gets him killed and we never have a chance to see Joel’s reaction to that. Def by Temptation has a strong moral and religious theme that manages to feel earnest without being preachy. Joel wants to travel and gain experience in order to be a better minister, maybe because, as his grandmother reminds him, faith without works is dead. That’s why K’s attempt to take on the demon by force ultimately fails. Joel has to rely on his faith to survive, and even then, we know his victory is a temporary one. Given the low budget, the quality is a little uneven. A few of the performances could be better, and the music doesn’t always fit. It’s got good practical effects for this kind of movie though. It also looks great, with lighting that swaps between pretty or dramatic depending on the scene. One look at the IMDB page of the cinematographer, Ernest R. Dickerson (who was featured in the Horror Noire documentary), makes it easy to see why. Apparently the DVD includes a discussion between Dickerson and Lloyd Kauffman where Dickerson explains that he and James Bond III basically directed Def by Temptation together, with Dickerson handling most of the look of the movie and Bond directing the actors. I remember spotting this in video stores back in the 90s and assuming that slangy title + religious elements would add up to an underwhelming experience, but now I'm thinking I should give a few more of those VHS boxes I used to leave on the shelf a try. I also kind of want to rewatch the chunk of Horror Noire that talks about this movie while it's still fresh in my mind. Watched: 1. Burn, Witch, Burn (1962); 2. TerrorVision (1986); 3. Evilspeak (1981) - Challenge #1; 4. Blood on Satan’s Claw (1971); 5. The City of the Dead (1960); 6. The Witches (1966); 7. The Crimson Cult (1968); 8. A Return to Salem’s Lot (1987) - Challenge #2; 9. Next of Kin (1982); 10. The Ritual (2017); 11. Def by Temptation (1990) - Challenge #3
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Oct 11, 2019 06:23
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Random Stranger posted:Ernest Dickerson has a great eye for horror visuals and it's a shame he didn't do more scary movies; it's this and Demon Knight for his horror filmography. Check out Def by Temptation, which is the movie I posted about for this challenge. Dickerson is listed as the cinematographer, and when I was reading up on the movie after seeing it, I learned that the DVD apparently includes a conversation between Dickerson and Lloyd Kaufman where Dickerson says that the directing duties were more of a joint effort between him and the credited director, James Bond III, with Bond mostly focused on the actors and Dickerson handling the movie's look and style. That movie really looks great, especially for something so low budget, so it might satisfy that urge for more of Dickerson's take on horror visuals.
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Oct 13, 2019 17:54
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 12. Halloween III (1982) I love this movie so much. I watch Halloween III every October, and since it was showing at a local horror film festival this year, I got to see it on the big screen. As someone who remembers when you'd mostly hear it described as a boring waste of time by fans of the rest of the franchise, I love that this one’s gotten more appreciation in recent years. It’s a grim little story that hooks into the fear that harmless fun might be somehow turned against us. The threat is ridiculous but entertaining, and I’ve always liked that the movie’s fantasy elements feel grounded by its mundane settings and sleazoid hero. Tom Atkins’ jerk character holds our attention better than a more traditional horror hero would have, and Dan O'Herlihy is also memorable as the cheerful villain. And while sitting in the back of the theater on Friday night, it was a treat to see how many horror nerds were quietly bopping back and forth in their seat every time the Silver Shamrock song came on.  13. House by the Cemetery (1981) After spending more than fifteen years avoiding scary movies and only being up for the occasional horror comedy, my husband watched some slashers with me, sat in on a few other kinds of movies, and then decided he was a Fulci fan. That felt a bit like jumping into the deep end of the pool, but it’s holding so far so now we always go to any local Fulci screenings. House by the Cemetery is a Lovecraft-style story about a professor who travels to a small town to take over the research of the recently deceased colleague that he’d been collaborating with. He's joined by his wife and their young son, Bob, who keeps coming across a strange little girl that warns him away from the old house they’ll be staying in. Despite a few intriguing hints about the research and running into locals who contradict the professor's claim that he’s never visited their town before, the plot turns into a fairly standard monster in the basement kind of thing. As always, Fulci delivers on creepy atmosphere and solid gore (if maybe a little less of that than usual). The story’s too straightforward for my taste though, and they hired an adult woman to do a notoriously bad kiddie voice-over for Bob on the english dub. Overall it’s still an entertaining movie, but I’d recommend it mostly for folks who already know that Fulci can do better than this or for someone looking for a spooky house story. Watched: 1. Burn, Witch, Burn (1962); 2. TerrorVision (1986); 3. Evilspeak (1981) - Challenge #1; 4. Blood on Satan’s Claw (1971); 5. The City of the Dead (1960); 6. The Witches (1966); 7. The Crimson Cult (1968); 8. A Return to Salem’s Lot (1987) - Challenge #2; 9. Next of Kin (1982); 10. The Ritual (2017); 11. Def by Temptation (1990) - Challenge #3; 12. Halloween III (1982); 13. House by the Cemetery (1981)
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Oct 14, 2019 01:21
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 14. The Dorm That Dripped Blood (1982) Another film festival screening. The version that we saw was actually titled Death Dorm and included a few minutes’ worth of gore that got cut from the movie’s original theatrical release. The movie is mostly about Joanne, a college student who plans to spend her winter break clearing out an old dorm building that’s about to be torn down. A few other students stay behind to help, and then some murders happen. This one is bad y’all. It’s bad even by low-budget, basically-a-student-film standards. About eighty percent of the movie is walking around in dorm hallways while they do not drip any blood. The effects are actually fine for a cheap 80s movie, and the overall idea of the story isn’t terrible. But the script just doesn’t have enough to fill 88 minutes. There’s a subplot about Joanne not knowing if she’s ready to move in with her boyfriend, but while it’s the focus of the first part of the movie, that part of the story is totally pointless and doesn’t go anywhere. Then there’s the early victim, the socially awkward guy that likes Joanne but doesn’t have the guts to make a move, the girl with the crush on the class clown, and the spooky lurker who spies on the others. And sure, those all sound like plot elements, but they’re only explored just enough to give all these people reasons to walk around the dorm and tut about what they should do. One sleazy side character’s scenes are clearly just there to slot him into place for the ending, which takes too drat long but does at least manage an interesting conclusion. Not interesting enough to justify the 80+ dreary minutes of garbage that it took to get to that point though. I guess you should watch it if you really dig people running around empty buildings or would like to see the first movie with that chick that played Princess Vespa in Spaceballs.  15. Phenomena (1985) This is another one of those dreamy Argento movies that are so engaging that it doesn’t quite matter if they entirely make sense. It’s about Jennifer (played by Jennifer Connelly just before she did Labyrinth), who arrives at a Swiss boarding school while there’s a killer on the loose nearby. While sleepwalking, Jennifer witnesses a murder and has a few other nightmarish encounters that leave her in the woods, where she’s found by a chimpanzee. (No, really.) Inga the chimp takes her home to Donald Pleasence, whose character is an entomologist that realizes Jennifer’s unusual affinity for insects might help find the murderer. Phenomena has a great sense of atmosphere, but the overall style of it isn’t striking as Suspiria or Deep Red. Some of the music doesn’t mesh well, and I’ve never understood the decision to pay for Flash of the Blade when you could have Goblin write something that actually fits those scenes. And while she’s great in her role, Daria Nicolodi’s presence may blunt the ending a bit for folks who’ve seen enough Argento to pick her out. Despite some quibbles, this is probably in my top 5 Argento movies because it’s just so bonkers. Watched: 1. Burn, Witch, Burn (1962); 2. TerrorVision (1986); 3. Evilspeak (1981) - Challenge #1; 4. Blood on Satan’s Claw (1971); 5. The City of the Dead (1960); 6. The Witches (1966); 7. The Crimson Cult (1968); 8. A Return to Salem’s Lot (1987) - Challenge #2; 9. Next of Kin (1982); 10. The Ritual (2017); 11. Def by Temptation (1990) - Challenge #3; 12. Halloween III (1982); 13. House by the Cemetery (1981); 14. The Dorm That Dripped Blood (1982); 15. Phenomena (1985)
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Oct 15, 2019 04:18
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SUPER SAMHAIN CHALLENGE #4: Inktober  16. Color Me Blood Red (1965) I was having a hard time with the individual prompts list because I’ve been trying to use the challenges as an excuse to watch something I hadn’t planned on, and the list didn’t seem specific enough to point me in a different direction. So I went with the art and artists option. Color Me Blood Red is a Herschell Gordon Lewis movie about Adam, a struggling painter who finds fresh inspiration in painting with blood. It’s a good concept, but despite the bloody canvases and one gross-out guts shot, it’s actually fairly tame. The movie breaks up Adam’s frantic painting sprees with a bunch of teen beach party bullshit, and that side of the story is too sparse and quirky to make it a satisfying mix. With a better script, this one could have been a classic. But it feels pretty half-assed compared to Blood Feast or Two Thousand Maniacs. It doesn’t hit the same level of either weirdness or influence as Lewis’s earlier gore-fests, and while it’s not exactly terrible, it still felt like kind of a waste of time. While I'm still on pace to finish my 31 movies, I was planning to be a little ahead by now and that just hasn't happened. I hope my next pick turns out better than this one did because between this and The Dorm That Dripped Blood, I'm starting to lose momentum. Watched: 1. Burn, Witch, Burn (1962); 2. TerrorVision (1986); 3. Evilspeak (1981) - Challenge #1; 4. Blood on Satan’s Claw (1971); 5. The City of the Dead (1960); 6. The Witches (1966); 7. The Crimson Cult (1968); 8. A Return to Salem’s Lot (1987) - Challenge #2; 9. Next of Kin (1982); 10. The Ritual (2017); 11. Def by Temptation (1990) - Challenge #3; 12. Halloween III (1982); 13. House by the Cemetery (1981); 14. The Dorm That Dripped Blood (1982); 15. Phenomena (1985) 16. Color Me Blood Red (1965) - Challenge #4
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Oct 16, 2019 20:05
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 17. Girls With Balls (2018) My last six movies have all been either film festival stuff or challenge picks, so for tonight I chose something random from Netflix. Girls With Balls is a French horror comedy directed by Olivier Afonso, who’s the special effects/makeup artist that did the gore in Raw. So as you’d expect, the effects in this one are solid. The story’s about a semi-professional (?) volleyball team whose members are trapped in the woods and hunted down by whatever you’d call rednecks in France. And sometimes a guitar guy pops up to sing about all the deadly danger they’re in. It’s got a decent mix of gags and story, and some of the actors are fun to watch, especially the head French redneck. Unfortunately it also includes a couple of tropes that I'm not a huge fan of. Girls With Balls flirts with the idea of being a sleazy exploitation flick, but then it doesn’t actually push any boundaries. And its swipes at being a girl-power story are hampered by all the lingering butt shots and arguments over boys. If the movie had picked either of those styles to commit to, I'd be pushing it at everyone I know. Instead we got something that's entertaining enough in the moment but also pretty forgettable. If you’re interested in this one, I’d recommend watching the French language version with subtitles. Netflix US often starts foreign movies with the English dub for me, but as usual, it’s worth switching over. Watched: 1. Burn, Witch, Burn (1962); 2. TerrorVision (1986); 3. Evilspeak (1981) - Challenge #1; 4. Blood on Satan’s Claw (1971); 5. The City of the Dead (1960); 6. The Witches (1966); 7. The Crimson Cult (1968); 8. A Return to Salem’s Lot (1987) - Challenge #2; 9. Next of Kin (1982); 10. The Ritual (2017); 11. Def by Temptation (1990) - Challenge #3; 12. Halloween III (1982); 13. House by the Cemetery (1981); 14. The Dorm That Dripped Blood (1982); 15. Phenomena (1985); 16. Color Me Blood Red (1965) - Challenge #4; 17. Girls With Balls (2018)
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Oct 17, 2019 07:01
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SUPER SAMHAIN CHALLENGE #5: Tourist Trap  18. Tarot (2009) Looking over the options for this challenge made me realize that even though I’ve seen plenty of exploitation movies that were shot in the Philippines, they were all made by American directors and companies that filmed there in the 70s or 80s. This seemed like a good opportunity to change that. Tarot is about Cara, a young girl who inherits her grandmother’s affinity for reading the tarot. Her first few experiments with the cards prove to be accurate, and her fearful mother makes her promise to stop fortune telling. Fifteen years later, Cara decides to use her gift to find her missing fiancé. Her mother warns her that the cards may help, but that there will also be a price. I spent the first half hour of this one worried that it would be more supernatural drama than horror, but then the good stuff kicked in. The tarot scenes involve a small amount of iffy CGI, but those shots aren’t as much of a focus as the better looking veiled ghosts that crop up whenever things get spooky. The story involves some interesting twists, and I also liked that while Cara’s fortunes were always accurate, she often misinterpreted them until their meanings became clear. The movie was a little heavy on the relationship drama though. I would have minded that less if the characters were more developed, but Cara’s fiancé, Manuel, was so bland that I kept wondering why he was worth all this trouble in the first place. The ending had me steeling myself against an unpleasant outcome and then gave me something else, which was a nice surprise. Watched: 1. Burn, Witch, Burn (1962); 2. TerrorVision (1986); 3. Evilspeak (1981) - Challenge #1; 4. Blood on Satan’s Claw (1971); 5. The City of the Dead (1960); 6. The Witches (1966); 7. The Crimson Cult (1968); 8. A Return to Salem’s Lot (1987) - Challenge #2; 9. Next of Kin (1982); 10. The Ritual (2017); 11. Def by Temptation (1990) - Challenge #3; 12. Halloween III (1982); 13. House by the Cemetery (1981); 14. The Dorm That Dripped Blood (1982); 15. Phenomena (1985); 16. Color Me Blood Red (1965) - Challenge #4; 17. Girls With Balls (2018); 18. Tarot (2009) - Challenge #5
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Oct 18, 2019 03:40
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 19. Jug Face (2013) I went back to my folk & rural horror list today and watched Jug Face, a movie about a remote mountain community that worships a muddy hole in the ground. The story’s about Ada, a pregnant teen who’s the first to learn that the pit has marked her as its next sacrifice. When she hides the jug that’s meant to tell the group it’s time for an offering, it doesn’t take long for the poo poo to hit the fan. I’ve seen a couple of reviews call Ada selfish, but it seems perfectly relatable to me for someone her age to panic and then get tangled up in lies, especially because her life is harsh even apart from the whole worshipping a bloodthirsty pit thing. The movie does a surprisingly good job with the pit, too. It isn’t overexplained or introduced in some big dramatic way. It’s just a fact of life to the folks who’ve grown up there. Some of the actors are interesting to watch, and it has a really polished feel apart from a few iffy effects. I still came away from this with the sense that it didn’t live up to its potential, mostly thanks to a dreary ending that’s played flatly enough to feel kind of pointless. Watched: 1. Burn, Witch, Burn (1962); 2. TerrorVision (1986); 3. Evilspeak (1981) - Challenge #1; 4. Blood on Satan’s Claw (1971); 5. The City of the Dead (1960); 6. The Witches (1966); 7. The Crimson Cult (1968); 8. A Return to Salem’s Lot (1987) - Challenge #2; 9. Next of Kin (1982); 10. The Ritual (2017); 11. Def by Temptation (1990) - Challenge #3; 12. Halloween III (1982); 13. House by the Cemetery (1981); 14. The Dorm That Dripped Blood (1982); 15. Phenomena (1985); 16. Color Me Blood Red (1965) - Challenge #4; 17. Girls With Balls (2018); 18. Tarot (2009) - Challenge #5; 19. Jug Face (2013)
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Oct 19, 2019 05:02
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 20. Wake Wood (2009) This one’s about a couple who face a family tragedy, move to a small town, and are given a chance to spend three more days with their late daughter. It’s got a strong Pet Sematary vibe even apart from the revived kid concept, though Wake Wood is slower and includes more folk horror elements. Some of the actors do a nice job here, and there are some great, grisly scenes that lead up to the monkey-paw chunk of the story. But once Alice shows up, much of the tension disappears. At first her parents try to pretend that things are going as expected while the townspeople act pointlessly mysterious, and then there are some slasher style scenes. The overall tone stays pretty static through all this though, which makes the final third feel like a plot-driven march to the credits rather than an exploration of parental angst. Overall, I’d say Wake Wood has a good central idea but the execution falls a bit flat.  21. Happy Death Day (2017) A friend and I have a twenty year tradition of going to see questionable looking horror movies in the theater, and we caught this one when it first came out. Today we got together to work on our Halloween costumes, so we decided to put it on again and see how it held up. Happy Death Day is probably never going to top anybody’s best-of lists, but it’s a fun movie that more or less succeeds at what it’s trying to do. Jessica Rothe is great as Tree, whose backstory gives her a little more depth than you tend to see in a college slasher. Tree’s changing approach to living through her birthday leads to some interesting choices and character growth, too. I liked the twist that put a ticking clock on Tree’s do-overs, and I also still love the big dumb baby-head mascot. I haven’t seen the sequel yet, but will probably watch it sometime this week. Watched: 1. Burn, Witch, Burn (1962); 2. TerrorVision (1986); 3. Evilspeak (1981) - Challenge #1; 4. Blood on Satan’s Claw (1971); 5. The City of the Dead (1960); 6. The Witches (1966); 7. The Crimson Cult (1968); 8. A Return to Salem’s Lot (1987) - Challenge #2; 9. Next of Kin (1982); 10. The Ritual (2017); 11. Def by Temptation (1990) - Challenge #3; 12. Halloween III (1982); 13. House by the Cemetery (1981); 14. The Dorm That Dripped Blood (1982); 15. Phenomena (1985); 16. Color Me Blood Red (1965) - Challenge #4; 17. Girls With Balls (2018); 18. Tarot (2009) - Challenge #5; 19. Jug Face (2013); 20. Wake Wood (2009); 21. Happy Death Day (2017)
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Oct 21, 2019 04:50
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SUPER SAMHAIN CHALLENGE #6: Sometimes They Come Back  22. Poltergeist II (1986) This challenge was tricky for me thanks to streaming availability. I didn’t want to pay to rent one of the recent remakes I haven’t seen, and I didn’t want to just jump into some random sequel from a long, garbage franchise. I was thinking of watching Happy Death Day 2 U sometime soon, but I keep trying to use the challenges to choose things that aren't on my current watchlist. Thankfully I spotted this one while browsing through Prime, and despite seeing the original Poltergeist eleventy billion times on cable, I’d never bothered with any of its sequels. Turns out that might have been for the best. Poltergeist II introduces a creepy ghost minister who wants Carol Anne, but it’s never clear if he’s been retconned in as a source of the first haunting or if he was just coincidentally buried under the bulldozed cemetery and got attached to Carol Anne back when the original ghosts kidnapped her. The movie also adds a psychic grandma and a Native American shaman character whose job is to protect and teach these poor white people. The family’s oldest daughter was absent without as much as a “she’s off at college” line, which was surprising until I learned that the actress who played her was murdered by an ex-boyfriend shortly after the first movie came out. After a slow setup that introduces everyone and shows the family’s slightly reduced circumstances after their dream house collapsed into hell, the movie wanders through less than frightening ghost attacks. Given a couple of the early scenes I was expecting Carol Anne's inherited psychic abilities to come into play, but the character focus is all on Craig T. Nelson overcoming the skepticism that he’s somehow maintained despite living through a movie and a half of being haunted. A couple of the ghost monster designs looked pretty good, but overall I was just never afraid for these people because the movie took it fairly easy on them. All they had to do was listen to Taylor and be willing to fight for one another. The first movie had that “love is stronger than poltergeists” stuff too, but it also had a competent director who understood how to keep the tension rolling. Poltergeist II seems to be director Brian Gibson’s only horror credit, but given that the scene where the parents tell the children grandma died had less raw emotion than that one where the kid whined about wanting a TV, I’m not sure how Gibson managed to do all those biopics and dramas, either. The Freelings somehow manage to gently caress up their easy-out ending but face no consequences for that, making the climax really only interesting for that rockin’ version of the creepy minister’s hymn that plays in the background. Watched: 1. Burn, Witch, Burn (1962); 2. TerrorVision (1986); 3. Evilspeak (1981) - Challenge #1; 4. Blood on Satan’s Claw (1971); 5. The City of the Dead (1960); 6. The Witches (1966); 7. The Crimson Cult (1968); 8. A Return to Salem’s Lot (1987) - Challenge #2; 9. Next of Kin (1982); 10. The Ritual (2017); 11. Def by Temptation (1990) - Challenge #3; 12. Halloween III (1982); 13. House by the Cemetery (1981); 14. The Dorm That Dripped Blood (1982); 15. Phenomena (1985); 16. Color Me Blood Red (1965) - Challenge #4; 17. Girls With Balls (2018); 18. Tarot (2009) - Challenge #5; 19. Jug Face (2013); 20. Wake Wood (2009); 21. Happy Death Day (2017); 22. Poltergeist II (1986) - Challenge #6
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Oct 21, 2019 23:36
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Bruteman posted:It's been a while since I've seen it but I'm pretty sure they retconned it to be Kane and his cult, and the second part they outright state at some point in the movie (ie the spirits of the cult were there at the home and they tasted Carol Anne's lifeforce or something like that when she was trapped in the other dimension). I remember the part about meeting her on the other side, but if they came out and said that the earlier ghosts were just the cult instead of all the other people whose graves were there, I must not have been paying close enough attention. I liked the actor who played the preacher, but since that guy died during filming and they recast for part three, I'm not sure I'm interested enough to watch another one of these.
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Oct 22, 2019 01:06
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 23. Wolfman’s Got Nards (2018) My elementary school movie club showed us a copy of The Monster Squad back when it would have been on the New Releases shelf at the video store, and given that the other things we watched were all Universal monster movies from the 30s and 40s, I’m not entirely sure that the teacher prescreened it. I remember it seeming a little intense for something that we watched in school. After that I watched it fairly often thanks to a taped copy from HBO, so it was always surprising for me that I kept running into horror fans who'd never even heard of it until its more recent resurgence. Tonight I went to see Wolfman’s Got Nards, which is a thorough documentary that includes some making-of details as well as a look at the movie’s cultural impact. It was a treat to see that the doc has a quick interview with the local film buffs who dug up one of the rare copies of the 35mm print, because I’ve been going to screenings that one or the other of those guys have hosted for the past twenty years and I remember dragging a few friends who’d never seen The Monster Squad to their late-00s screening of it. If you’re a fan of The Monster Squad this is a must-see. It’s got some interesting info about the Stan Winston creature designs, interviews with cast members, and an interview with the director, who seems proud of the movie while also acknowledging that it stalled out his career. I loved all the moments with the fans who poured their hearts out about how this weird little movie made them feel less awkward and alone. Watched: 1. Burn, Witch, Burn (1962); 2. TerrorVision (1986); 3. Evilspeak (1981) - Challenge #1; 4. Blood on Satan’s Claw (1971); 5. The City of the Dead (1960); 6. The Witches (1966); 7. The Crimson Cult (1968); 8. A Return to Salem’s Lot (1987) - Challenge #2; 9. Next of Kin (1982); 10. The Ritual (2017); 11. Def by Temptation (1990) - Challenge #3; 12. Halloween III (1982); 13. House by the Cemetery (1981); 14. The Dorm That Dripped Blood (1982); 15. Phenomena (1985); 16. Color Me Blood Red (1965) - Challenge #4; 17. Girls With Balls (2018); 18. Tarot (2009) - Challenge #5; 19. Jug Face (2013); 20. Wake Wood (2009); 21. Happy Death Day (2017); 22. Poltergeist II (1986) - Challenge #6; 23. Wolfman’s Got Nards (2018)
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Oct 22, 2019 06:11
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 24. Spookies (1986) Spookies starts out with a young runaway who meets a drifter, decides that his parents must have set up a surprise birthday party for him in a creepy old mansion, and then gets attacked by some kind of werecat. Meanwhile, in another movie, a group of people who would never be friends in real life stumble over the mansion and decide to party there. They play with a ouija board and then one of their friends becomes a deadite-style possessed person that sends monsters after them. The ouija board and deadite lady are also under the control of a sorcerer that lures victims to the house to use their deaths to wake up the woman he’s obsessed with, who he’s kept in suspended animation for seventy years. I was planning on using this for the monster challenge because it is wall-to-wall monsters. None of them are particularly well developed, but in addition to the sorcerer, the werecat, and that deadite, Spookies has zombies, farting dirt golems, a tiny merman, a magical vampire kid, an electro shock tentacle monster, a hag, a spider lady, and an animated statue of the grim reaper. Unfortunately when I hit the halfway point I realized I’d seen at least part of this piece of poo poo movie before, probably on 90s late night cable, so that means it's back to the drawing board again to find something that new-to-me that definitely includes multiple monsters and is available either for free or on one of my current streaming options. That's probably for the best considering that these monsters don't really interact with each other at all. The plot is a disjointed mess, which made total sense once I read about how all the ouija monsters vs. party people footage was taken from the filmmakers and handed over to a new team that tacked on the sorcerer plot. That explains why half of the movie is filled with monster effects that look pretty good for a small mid-80s film and half of it has garbage makeup, cheapo zombies, and weird lighting. The writing of that core set of scenes was not exactly amazing, but the kills may have been strong enough to have supported a so-so story if the original team had been able to finish. Whoever wrote the new bits put in that overlong birthday party part that felt more like a prequel short than an actual part of the movie, and they also wrote a character who’d been in suspended animation since the 1910s but then jumped in a modern car and started looking for the keys. The behind-the-scenes stories I read about Spookies were better than the movie itself, and it would be interesting to see what the original filmmakers would have done with their footage. Watched: 1. Burn, Witch, Burn (1962); 2. TerrorVision (1986); 3. Evilspeak (1981) - Challenge #1; 4. Blood on Satan’s Claw (1971); 5. The City of the Dead (1960); 6. The Witches (1966); 7. The Crimson Cult (1968); 8. A Return to Salem’s Lot (1987) - Challenge #2; 9. Next of Kin (1982); 10. The Ritual (2017); 11. Def by Temptation (1990) - Challenge #3; 12. Halloween III (1982); 13. House by the Cemetery (1981); 14. The Dorm That Dripped Blood (1982); 15. Phenomena (1985); 16. Color Me Blood Red (1965) - Challenge #4; 17. Girls With Balls (2018); 18. Tarot (2009) - Challenge #5; 19. Jug Face (2013); 20. Wake Wood (2009); 21. Happy Death Day (2017); 22. Poltergeist II (1986) - Challenge #6; 23. Wolfman’s Got Nards (2018); 24. Spookies (1986)
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Oct 22, 2019 20:51
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SUPER SAMHAIN CHALLENGE #7: Monster Mash-up  25. The Midnight Hour (1985) This challenge was really difficult for me because I’ve seen a lot of the easy, more available picks, and I’ve been trying to avoid spending money on rentals or sitting through lovely looking CGI-fests. But just when I thought I’d have to subject myself to whatever the hell a whalewolf is, I stumbled over this one on YouTube. The Midnight Hour is a mid-80s TV movie with LeVar Burton, Dick Van Patten, and a handful of other mildly recognizable television actors. It starts out with an aggressively wholesome scene of the local paperboy (played by Macaulay Culkin) riding around to show us how Norman Rockwell this town is. We see the milkman, the church, the police station, and a group of boy scouts raising a flag in the town square before the kid tosses a paper over the cemetery fence for the grave digger. Then we meet Phil, a teenager who presents a school report on how his ancestor was a minister that hung his slave for witchcraft after stopping a curse that she put on the town. Oh, and Phil also helpfully announces to the class that this enslaved witch, Lucinda, was the ancestor of his friend Melissa, and boy does Melissa seem thrilled to have that fun fact about her family history brought up in that context. Despite being all "someone from my family owned and murdered someone from that girl's family," Phil is not the class jerk. He's the shy guy hero. Once school’s out, Phil, his crush Mary, Melissa, some jock, and cool New Yorker LaVar Burton break into the town’s witchcraft museum to swipe some costumes for the big party. They find a weird old scroll in there, so of course they take that to the graveyard and Melissa reads it out loud. Right after they leave, the graveyard erupts with monsters that spend the rest of the night overrunning the town. Most of the creatures look like run-of-the-mill zombies, including a dead serial killer and a featured zombie in great makeup who shows up at the party and seems happy to just hang out with the kids. There’s also a werewolf and some kind of demonic elf, whose actor does a really good job emoting beneath all the latex he’s wearing. Lucinda, who was given a shockingly nice headstone for an evil witch, crawls out of her grave as a vampire, and in the middle of all of this is a pretty blonde cheerleader. The monsters spread through the town transforming everyone they attack into new werewolves, vampires, and zombies while the teenagers throw a big dance party in Melissa’s family’s mansion. Phil never manages to let Mary know he likes her, but that doesn’t matter much after he meets Sandy, the graveyard cheerleader who guides him through fighting off all the monsters he and his friends unleashed. There are so many fun little elements in this one. It references other horror movies without overdoing that, and both the monster makeups and everyone’s Halloween costumes are great. There also are some really interesting scenes, like Lucinda’s wine cellar attack or the part where the monsters romp around downtown in a way that mirrors the start of the movie. I was a little worried that since the monsters all came from the same spell they wouldn’t seem different enough, but the movie makes a point of having some individual little touches, like using silver-tipped bullets on the werewolf and having the vampires stalk and bite some victims. It’s obvious early on that Sandy is a ghost brought back by the spell, but I loved that the ending establishes that she’s more specifically a hitchhiking ghost from those old urban legends. And have I mentioned the soundtrack yet? It’s got CCR, Three Dog Night, The Smiths, and some other recognizable stuff, often introduced by Wolfman Jack, who appears as the voice of a local radio DJ. There’s even an original song for a choreographed monster dance scene. The biggest real drawback is the pacing. There’s too much setup, which means that nobody who hasn’t been jumped by a monster notices anything weird going on until an hour in. After that, the made-for-tv runtime only gives Phil and Sandy a half hour to figure things out and gather everything they need to reverse the spell. If that first hour had focused more on building up a story arc instead of teen angst + partying, I feel like this would be more of a Halloween cult classic. But I'm guessing it's still dozens of times better than Sharktopus vs. Whalewolf. Watched: 1. Burn, Witch, Burn (1962); 2. TerrorVision (1986); 3. Evilspeak (1981) - Challenge #1; 4. Blood on Satan’s Claw (1971); 5. The City of the Dead (1960); 6. The Witches (1966); 7. The Crimson Cult (1968); 8. A Return to Salem’s Lot (1987) - Challenge #2; 9. Next of Kin (1982); 10. The Ritual (2017); 11. Def by Temptation (1990) - Challenge #3; 12. Halloween III (1982); 13. House by the Cemetery (1981); 14. The Dorm That Dripped Blood (1982); 15. Phenomena (1985); 16. Color Me Blood Red (1965) - Challenge #4; 17. Girls With Balls (2018); 18. Tarot (2009) - Challenge #5; 19. Jug Face (2013); 20. Wake Wood (2009); 21. Happy Death Day (2017); 22. Poltergeist II (1986) - Challenge #6; 23. Wolfman’s Got Nards (2018); 24. Spookies (1986); 25. The Midnight Hour (1985) - Challenge #7
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Oct 23, 2019 20:38
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SUPER SAMHAIN CHALLENGE #8: Happy Holidays!  26. P2 (2007) P2 has a really simple story. After working late on Christmas Eve, Angela gets trapped in her office building’s parking garage and is chased around by a dangerous creep who’s desperate to spend the holiday with her. I was in the mood for something straightforward when I put it on, but even so, this was maybe a little too basic. One problem was that the leads weren’t engaging enough to keep my mind off how many of the details didn’t add up. The bad guy clearly put some thought into planning all this, but he’d have had to kidnap Angela’s coworker before knowing for sure that he'd have a chance to isolate her. That was the biggest thing that stood out, but there were a few other “wait, really?” moments on the part of both main characters. Oh, and I also wasn’t in love with giving Angela an involuntary costume change that, hey, just so happens to show off her cleavage. Not that I have anything against cleavage, it just feels like a mismatch to scold the stalker for crossing boundaries when the movie takes advantage of that to sexy up the heroine for the rest of the runtime. I didn’t like how relatively helpless Angela was for the whole first hour, but when that changed, it led to an uncomfortable moment that I wasn’t ready for. Normally I’d try not to spoil something that happens so late in a movie, but since this is a sensitive area for a lot of folks: the dog dies violently. It’s such a nasty, senseless little scene that feels darker than the rest of the tone, and I’m saying that as a person who doesn’t typically have trouble with (simulated) animal death in horror. If P2 had added a little complexity instead of just trying to make me uncomfortable, it would have been an interesting change of pace from your typical holiday slasher. But this is not making it into my yearly Christmas horror rotation. Watched: 1. Burn, Witch, Burn (1962); 2. TerrorVision (1986); 3. Evilspeak (1981) - Challenge #1; 4. Blood on Satan’s Claw (1971); 5. The City of the Dead (1960); 6. The Witches (1966); 7. The Crimson Cult (1968); 8. A Return to Salem’s Lot (1987) - Challenge #2; 9. Next of Kin (1982); 10. The Ritual (2017); 11. Def by Temptation (1990) - Challenge #3; 12. Halloween III (1982); 13. House by the Cemetery (1981); 14. The Dorm That Dripped Blood (1982); 15. Phenomena (1985); 16. Color Me Blood Red (1965) - Challenge #4; 17. Girls With Balls (2018); 18. Tarot (2009) - Challenge #5; 19. Jug Face (2013); 20. Wake Wood (2009); 21. Happy Death Day (2017); 22. Poltergeist II (1986) - Challenge #6; 23. Wolfman’s Got Nards (2018); 24. Spookies (1986); 25. The Midnight Hour (1985) - Challenge #7; 26. P2 (2007) Challenge #8
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Oct 25, 2019 01:51
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 27. Dan Curtis’s Dracula (1973) Tonight I was in the mood for something tame, and as a Dark Shadows fan, I’ve been meaning to get around to this one since spotting it on Shudder. And while I’m not sure this version will end up on my best-draculas list, it was enjoyable enough to recommend, partly because it takes an unusual angle on the story. We start out with Harker, the carriage, the foreboding European castle, etc. Jack Palance’s Dracula is quiet but forceful, and while he’s hardly a charmer, he doesn’t seem monstrous until he’s angry and even then there’s a bit of restraint. Right at the start he looks at one of Harker’s photos and Lucy catches his eye. Just after that scene we see him looking at an image of himself as Vlad the Impaler in a tapestry, and of course, the woman beside him in the tapestry looks just like Lucy. The rest of the story is a stripped down version that focuses on Arthur Holmwood, Van Helsing, and Dracula's past. I found a review that claims that this was the first movie to really associate Dracula with Vlad Tepes. I don’t have a deep enough knowledge of other adaptations to say if that’s true or not, but I did notice that In Search of Dracula, the book that popularized the idea that Stoker was directly inspired by Vlad Tepes (instead of just coming across the name Dracul in his research and deciding to use it) was published a year before this movie was made. I’m also curious about whether this is the first movie to use the idea of a modern woman as Dracula’s reincarnated love. Curtis apparently said in an interview that he lifted that idea from Dark Shadows, and while I don’t remember spotting it in any earlier Dracula movies, I’m hardly an expert. It’s interesting to note that Francis Ford Coppola’s 1992 Dracula uses both Vlad Tepes and Drac’s reincarnated wife, and this movie had always been titled Bram Stoker’s Dracula until the early 90s when Coppola paid its rights-holders for that name. (I probably could have managed to watch another movie tonight if I hadn't wandered off into reading about Dracula on the internet, but whatever. I'm on pace, and geeking out about this poo poo is fun.) Overall, I liked this one. While I had some issues with its pacing, Richard Matheson’s script did a nice job of making something fresh out of the story. The movie also looks good, with pretty lighting and some interesting off-kilter shots. It’s definitely worth watching for Dracula fans who haven’t seen it yet. Watched: 1. Burn, Witch, Burn (1962); 2. TerrorVision (1986); 3. Evilspeak (1981) - Challenge #1; 4. Blood on Satan’s Claw (1971); 5. The City of the Dead (1960); 6. The Witches (1966); 7. The Crimson Cult (1968); 8. A Return to Salem’s Lot (1987) - Challenge #2; 9. Next of Kin (1982); 10. The Ritual (2017); 11. Def by Temptation (1990) - Challenge #3; 12. Halloween III (1982); 13. House by the Cemetery (1981); 14. The Dorm That Dripped Blood (1982); 15. Phenomena (1985); 16. Color Me Blood Red (1965) - Challenge #4; 17. Girls With Balls (2018); 18. Tarot (2009) - Challenge #5; 19. Jug Face (2013); 20. Wake Wood (2009); 21. Happy Death Day (2017); 22. Poltergeist II (1986) - Challenge #6; 23. Wolfman’s Got Nards (2018); 24. Spookies (1986); 25. The Midnight Hour (1985) - Challenge #7; 26. P2 (2007) Challenge #8; 27. Dan Curtis’s Dracula (1973)
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Oct 25, 2019 05:34
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SUPER SAMHAIN CHALLENGE #9: Hackers  28. Interface (1985) Interface is about a group of android LARPers whose prank game accidentally gets Lou Diamond Phillips killed. On the advice of their “master process” computer program, they decide to raise the stakes and murder people they think aren't good for society, which quickly turns into targeting people they dislike. When a comp-sci professor (Rex) and a young widow (Amy) fall under suspicion for a suspicious death, they have to investigate while ducking both the cops and the nerd herd. This one’s a student film, and that shows. But it’s also an example of how to make a surprisingly charming low-budget movie. Rex and Amy have a great screwball comedy dynamic, all fast patter dialogue and odd little moments that would sound stupid to describe but manage to fit the movie’s tone. She climbs out through his office’s drop ceiling the first time they meet, and instead of feeling “lol, so random,” it’s actually kind of cute. As you might expect, the student group is better with computers than Professor Rex, who’s so unsuccessful at tracking them that he pretty much just stumbles into their lair. The group runs into trouble when they’re not at their keyboards though, screwing up their attacks and failing to keep their grade-fixing business quiet enough to avoid unwanted attention. It’s also entertaining that they pride themselves on being guided by logic even as they get increasingly panicked and lash out at their enemies—and at one another. The movie’s biggest strength is probably its writing. The jokes land pretty well (I laughed out loud at the hackers charging more to get someone out of the Columbia Record Club than they did for a grade change), and the story is entertaining despite a few times when it seems unfocused. The overall fun factor makes it easy to overlook the occasionally shaky shots and tinfoil robo-people costumes. The horror elements could have been more intense (Letterboxd tags this as thriller, comedy and horror, though it slants more strongly towards the first two), but it was probably better for them to avoid trying to do too much. Watched: 1. Burn, Witch, Burn (1962); 2. TerrorVision (1986); 3. Evilspeak (1981) - Challenge #1; 4. Blood on Satan’s Claw (1971); 5. The City of the Dead (1960); 6. The Witches (1966); 7. The Crimson Cult (1968); 8. A Return to Salem’s Lot (1987) - Challenge #2; 9. Next of Kin (1982); 10. The Ritual (2017); 11. Def by Temptation (1990) - Challenge #3; 12. Halloween III (1982); 13. House by the Cemetery (1981); 14. The Dorm That Dripped Blood (1982); 15. Phenomena (1985); 16. Color Me Blood Red (1965) - Challenge #4; 17. Girls With Balls (2018); 18. Tarot (2009) - Challenge #5; 19. Jug Face (2013); 20. Wake Wood (2009); 21. Happy Death Day (2017); 22. Poltergeist II (1986) - Challenge #6; 23. Wolfman’s Got Nards (2018); 24. Spookies (1986); 25. The Midnight Hour (1985) - Challenge #7; 26. P2 (2007) Challenge #8; 27. Dan Curtis’s Dracula (1973); 28. Interface (1985) - Challenge #9
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Oct 26, 2019 02:17
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Basebf555 posted:The original title of the movie is "Fall Break", and sure enough, the version on Amazon has "Fall Break" as the title in the credits. You might ask why it matters that a slasher had an alternate title, surely that happens all the time? Well, this one goes a bit farther than that because there's a sitcom-esque main title song that was recorded for the movie(I think?) and combined with the weird artificial acting it really creates this feeling that you're watching a hyper violent and gory Perfect Strangers or something like that. The song was definitely written for the movie. I live fairly close to where The Mutilator was filmed, and one of the theaters did a screening that included a Q&A with the director and several actors. In addition to the regular 8 x 10 photos for the signing part, they were selling 7" Fall Break records.
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Oct 28, 2019 18:04
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SUPER SAMHAIN CHALLENGE #10: Navel Gazing  29. Occult (2009) This challenge wasn’t as hard as it could have been because a couple of weeks back, I started keeping a list of movies that reviews here made me interested in. I didn’t write down the username of whoever put this one on my radar, but if you posted about it earlier in the month, thanks! I’m not a fan of found footage in general, but I do sometimes like the ones about news broadcasts or documentaries that go off the rails. Occult follows a documentary film crew investigating a random knife attack that killed two people and left one man permanently scarred. It starts with the general facts of the attack as well as interviews with witnesses and people close to the victims. Then the survivor tells the crew something that gives their project a surprising new thing to focus on. Everything unfolded in a very natural way, with hardly any of those typical found footage wobbly camera jump scares. Occult is more about atmosphere and a growing sense of dread. One of the things I like about newsy found footage is that the good ones often involve a gradual breakdown of the barriers between the subject and the person behind the camera, and Occult delivers on that front. That ending went right where I assumed it would given how petty or malicious all the “miracles” seemed to be. Thankfully that didn’t spoil the fun of the rest of the movie. I’m pretty sure at this point that I’ll be able to get my 31 movies in, but I’m not sure if I’ll finish all the challenges given how hectic last weekend was. Prepping for a Halloween party + hangover + cleaning up after the Halloween party = no time for watching. I may be able to swing it if nothing unexpected crops up though. Watched: 1. Burn, Witch, Burn (1962); 2. TerrorVision (1986); 3. Evilspeak (1981) - Challenge #1; 4. Blood on Satan’s Claw (1971); 5. The City of the Dead (1960); 6. The Witches (1966); 7. The Crimson Cult (1968); 8. A Return to Salem’s Lot (1987) - Challenge #2; 9. Next of Kin (1982); 10. The Ritual (2017); 11. Def by Temptation (1990) - Challenge #3; 12. Halloween III (1982); 13. House by the Cemetery (1981); 14. The Dorm That Dripped Blood (1982); 15. Phenomena (1985); 16. Color Me Blood Red (1965) - Challenge #4; 17. Girls With Balls (2018); 18. Tarot (2009) - Challenge #5; 19. Jug Face (2013); 20. Wake Wood (2009); 21. Happy Death Day (2017); 22. Poltergeist II (1986) - Challenge #6; 23. Wolfman’s Got Nards (2018); 24. Spookies (1986); 25. The Midnight Hour (1985) - Challenge #7; 26. P2 (2007) Challenge #8; 27. Dan Curtis’s Dracula (1973); 28. Interface (1985) - Challenge #9; 29. Occult (2009) - Challenge #10
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Oct 29, 2019 05:59
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SUPER SAMHAIN CHALLENGE #11: All Hail The King  30. Pet Sematary (2019) The original adaptation is a nostalgic fave, so I put off watching this one. And while it eventually separates itself, I’m not sure I’ll revisit it any time soon. The first chunk of the movie shows us that Louis and Rachel Creed have different outlooks on the subject of death and, more importantly, how to talk about that as a family. Rachel wants to protect their daughter, Ellie, from having to think about it until she’s older. Louis wants to take a more pragmatic approach but doesn’t push the issue given his wife’s difficult past. When the Creeds are forced to deal with loss, there’s an interesting reversal. Louis, a skeptic who’s just brushed up against the supernatural, is suddenly the one who can’t handle death. And despite having no previous knowledge of what Louis has been up to until it’s too late, Rachel is the one who accepts the truth. John Lithgow does a nice job here, though it did take me a scene or two to stop wishing for Fred Gwynne’s warmer sense of charm. I also liked the ritualistic pet funeral and the Ellie-monster being able to communicate with and manipulate the parents. This feels like more of a streamlined take in some ways, and a lot of its individual elements are fine. But it never hooked me in the way that a second adaptation of a popular novel really needs to in order to feel like there’s much of a point to watching it. Watched: 1. Burn, Witch, Burn (1962); 2. TerrorVision (1986); 3. Evilspeak (1981) - Challenge #1; 4. Blood on Satan’s Claw (1971); 5. The City of the Dead (1960); 6. The Witches (1966); 7. The Crimson Cult (1968); 8. A Return to Salem’s Lot (1987) - Challenge #2; 9. Next of Kin (1982); 10. The Ritual (2017); 11. Def by Temptation (1990) - Challenge #3; 12. Halloween III (1982); 13. House by the Cemetery (1981); 14. The Dorm That Dripped Blood (1982); 15. Phenomena (1985); 16. Color Me Blood Red (1965) - Challenge #4; 17. Girls With Balls (2018); 18. Tarot (2009) - Challenge #5; 19. Jug Face (2013); 20. Wake Wood (2009); 21. Happy Death Day (2017); 22. Poltergeist II (1986) - Challenge #6; 23. Wolfman’s Got Nards (2018); 24. Spookies (1986); 25. The Midnight Hour (1985) - Challenge #7; 26. P2 (2007) Challenge #8; 27. Dan Curtis’s Dracula (1973); 28. Interface (1985) - Challenge #9; 29. Occult (2009) - Challenge #10; 30. Pet Sematary (2019) - Challenge #11
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Oct 29, 2019 20:11
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SUPER SAMHAIN CHALLENGE #12: Cavalcade of Creepiness  31. From a Whisper to a Scream (1987) I don’t watch many anthologies, maybe because they tend to be so inconsistent in terms of the style or quality of the shorts. I’m also a little tired of the “person makes a bad choice and then dies” formula, which is all that most anthology segments have time for. That style of story does show up in From a Whisper to a Scream, but there’s more to each short than that so I found it surprisingly fun. It’s also really grisly and dark for an anthology movie, which was a nice change of pace. The frame story, which introduces the tormented town of Oldfield, went to a surprising place right at the start, even before Vincent Price starts telling tales about the twisted history of the town. The first story is about the kind of “nice” guy whose neighbors would call him quiet and polite once the world found out about his dark side, and it manages to be thoroughly creepy even before its out-there ending. The second story, about a guy so mean and selfish that he can’t show gratitude to someone who helped him, finishes on a nasty scene that I think works even if you saw it coming. The carnival story that comes next may be the most mean-spirited of the bunch, making it clear that Oldfield is dangerous even if you’re doing something as seemingly harmless as falling in love. Then there’s a civil war story that connects the horrors of war to depraved children in a much more direct way than Who Can Kill a Child did. That last section has a moment that managed to be gross enough to be shocking even after all the necrophilia, burning alive, and being torn apart from the inside of the earlier stories. I liked this one a lot, and I'd have a hard time picking a favorite from among the stories. Highly recommended, but it may be a little too dark to watch with a group unless they're all solid horror fans.  32. The She-Creature (1956) I had a little extra time yesterday but didn’t want to watch my last challenge movie until Halloween, so I put on the first random thing on Prime that caught my eye. This is one of those cases where it might have paid to be more selective. The idea of a hypnotist pushing his past-life regression “research” so far back in time that his subject isn’t human any more is an interesting idea for a monster movie, but The She-Creature doesn’t bother developing the pre-historical stuff or any of its other potential themes. Instead the characters just drag us slowly through the plot until the creature appears again. There’s also a lot of talking about money and staring down a chunky old dog. The time frame is pretty difficult to pin down because they’re publishing books and declaring that one of the characters is a national sensation when all we see him do is repeat his sideshow act in a rich guy’s living room for the same group of people a few times. I also don't get the point of having a romance arc that involves five people, only two of which seem to genuinely like each other at any point during the movie. The creature itself is confusing. It has boobs so you know it’s a lady monster, but it also looks pretty lizardy, which would make the breasts biologically pointless. Maybe it’s some kind of armored aquatic mammal that can feed its young with breasts that have no nipples? All I know is that if I’m spending this much time trying to figure out the science of the monster, then the rest of your movie is boring. Watched: 1. Burn, Witch, Burn (1962); 2. TerrorVision (1986); 3. Evilspeak (1981) - Challenge #1; 4. Blood on Satan’s Claw (1971); 5. The City of the Dead (1960); 6. The Witches (1966); 7. The Crimson Cult (1968); 8. A Return to Salem’s Lot (1987) - Challenge #2; 9. Next of Kin (1982); 10. The Ritual (2017); 11. Def by Temptation (1990) - Challenge #3; 12. Halloween III (1982); 13. House by the Cemetery (1981); 14. The Dorm That Dripped Blood (1982); 15. Phenomena (1985); 16. Color Me Blood Red (1965) - Challenge #4; 17. Girls With Balls (2018); 18. Tarot (2009) - Challenge #5; 19. Jug Face (2013); 20. Wake Wood (2009); 21. Happy Death Day (2017); 22. Poltergeist II (1986) - Challenge #6; 23. Wolfman’s Got Nards (2018); 24. Spookies (1986); 25. The Midnight Hour (1985) - Challenge #7; 26. P2 (2007) Challenge #8; 27. Dan Curtis’s Dracula (1973); 28. Interface (1985) - Challenge #9; 29. Occult (2009) - Challenge #10; 30. Pet Sematary (2019) - Challenge #11; 31. From a Whisper to a Scream (1987) - Challenge #12; 32. The She-Creature (1956);
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Oct 31, 2019 17:09
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 33. Slugs (1988) This is one of those movies I watch every year, so I was a little surprised at how lukewarm its reviews have been so far. It’s beautifully goopy, with tons of scenes of tromping through muck as well as generous splashes of gore. The story drags just a bit at towards the end, and the actors are hardly amazing. But the thing that makes Slugs so great is something I don’t see mentioned much: it’s funny as hell. It’s got that kind of dry humor that’s probably tempting to write off as bad writing or direction, but it’s hard for me to believe that Juan Piquer Simón, the guy that made something as bonkers as Pieces, didn’t hit exactly what he was going for here. I mean, it starts out with a scene of a guy being dragged off a boat by the tips of his toes as they trail in the water. The slugs move in a pack whenever it isn’t more dramatic for one to hide in a head of lettuce, squirm into a garden glove, or menace our hero’s finger with it’s ridiculously tiny teeth. And when the brave civil servants fighting off this infestation realize that their plan will endanger the town they just shrug, decide it’s worth trying anyway, and don’t warn anyone, even their friends or families, that they’re about to blow up the sewer. There are so many little funny touches even apart from that scene in the greenhouse, or the time when the health inspector is told he doesn’t have the authority to declare Happy Birthday in this town. One of the kills is a little mean-spirited for my taste (though there’s nothing as squicky as there is in Pieces), and the movie doesn’t push the reckless development angle quite hard enough. My sense of the acting also isn’t helped by some of the dubbing. But I love Slugs despite its flaws, and it’s always seemed like a shame to me that Pieces is the movie that Simón is more often remembered for. SUPER SAMHAIN CHALLENGE #13: Maniac 34. Halloween II (1981) I picked Halloween II as my guilty pleasure because it feels like the orphan of the series, and even plenty of horror nerds see it as pointless at best. But the influence of Halloween II is all over everything that follows thanks to that whole hidden Myers sibling thing. It’s the movie that sets up the idea that Michael wants to kill the rest of his family, and it also helps establish Loomis as an increasingly unstable nutjob who cares more about containing Michael than any collateral damage he inflicts along the way. Halloween 2018 ditches this one along with the sillier cult stuff of later episodes, which is fine given that it doesn't follow the family route. But that does cut out some of Loomis's memorable moments. While it’s not as frequently panned as part 6 or Resurrection, Halloween II is still often described as skippable. Maybe it’s partly the nostalgia talking, but I always enjoy it. There are some solid kills, and a few scenes, like the shots of Myers wandering through suburban streets and houses, seemed echoed in Halloween 2018. It’s also got a couple of good laughs for this style of slasher. The Laurie/Michael connection is a bit clumsy in the way it’s handled, and the movie could have done more to ramp up the tension in its final scenes. But it does a good job of showing the chaos in the wake of Michael’s first attack, and it’s always a good time. I think that being a sequel to one of the best horror movies of its time means it’s judged more harshly than standalone films of a similar (or lesser) quality. I’ll definitely keep revisiting it every couple of years though. That's my full 31 movies finished as well as all 13 challenges. I'll do a wrap-up post at some point tomorrow. Watched: 1. Burn, Witch, Burn (1962); 2. TerrorVision (1986); 3. Evilspeak (1981) - Challenge #1; 4. Blood on Satan’s Claw (1971); 5. The City of the Dead (1960); 6. The Witches (1966); 7. The Crimson Cult (1968); 8. A Return to Salem’s Lot (1987) - Challenge #2; 9. Next of Kin (1982); 10. The Ritual (2017); 11. Def by Temptation (1990) - Challenge #3; 12. Halloween III (1982); 13. House by the Cemetery (1981); 14. The Dorm That Dripped Blood (1982); 15. Phenomena (1985); 16. Color Me Blood Red (1965) - Challenge #4; 17. Girls With Balls (2018); 18. Tarot (2009) - Challenge #5; 19. Jug Face (2013); 20. Wake Wood (2009); 21. Happy Death Day (2017); 22. Poltergeist II (1986) - Challenge #6; 23. Wolfman’s Got Nards (2018); 24. Spookies (1986); 25. The Midnight Hour (1985) - Challenge #7; 26. P2 (2007) Challenge #8; 27. Dan Curtis’s Dracula (1973); 28. Interface (1985) - Challenge #9; 29. Occult (2009) - Challenge #10; 30. Pet Sematary (2019) - Challenge #11; 31. From a Whisper to a Scream (1987) - Challenge #12; 32. The She-Creature (1956); 33. Slugs (1988); 34. Halloween II (1981) - Challenge #13
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Nov 1, 2019 04:46
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I had a great time with this, though next year I’ll probably skip any attempt at having a theme. Trying to do a deep dive into folk and witchy horror worked fine at the start of the month, but as the challenges piled up and I did more theatrical screenings or movie nights with friends, my list got really unfocused anyway. I feel pretty burned out, not so much from watching movies as from researching challenge options and thinking over my write-ups, both of which took a lot more time than I expected. Next year I should really just cut myself some slack and spend September making a huge watchlist of interesting, easily streamable horror that I can pick through based on mood, runtime, the phase of the moon, or whatever. I finished 34 movies (my goal was 31) as well as all 13 challenges. At least 10 of the movies weren’t from the US (though nearly half of those were UK films), and I watched at least one movie from every decade since the 50s. Out of the movies I hadn’t seen before, my top five were The City of the Dead (1960), Next of Kin (1982), Def by Temptation (1990), Occult (2009), and From a Whisper to a Scream (1987). Three of those were challenge picks I may not have watched otherwise, so for me, the challenges were really successful at nudging me towards different types of movies. My favorites of the things I’d already seen were Halloween II (1981), Halloween III (1982), Phenomena (1985), A Return to Salem’s Lot (1987), and Slugs (1988). The biggest surprise was probably Interface (1985), which I picked because it was free on YouTube and fit one of the challenges. I was expecting a shaky student film along the lines of The Dorm That Dripped Blood (1982), something slow and forgettable that ticked off that "killer technology" box. Instead, Interface was an cheap but engaging thriller with a few solid characters and some laugh-out-loud moments. Overall I liked most of these movies, and even the ones that weren’t amazing tended to have moments that made them worth checking out. I also got a lot out of reading everyone else's reviews, so thanks to everyone who posted their thoughts, came up with challenge ideas, shared movie suggestions, or worked to put all this together. Watched: 1. Burn, Witch, Burn (1962); 2. TerrorVision (1986); 3. Evilspeak (1981) - Challenge #1; 4. Blood on Satan’s Claw (1971); 5. The City of the Dead (1960); 6. The Witches (1966); 7. The Crimson Cult (1968); 8. A Return to Salem’s Lot (1987) - Challenge #2; 9. Next of Kin (1982); 10. The Ritual (2017); 11. Def by Temptation (1990) - Challenge #3; 12. Halloween III (1982); 13. House by the Cemetery (1981); 14. The Dorm That Dripped Blood (1982); 15. Phenomena (1985); 16. Color Me Blood Red (1965) - Challenge #4; 17. Girls With Balls (2018); 18. Tarot (2009) - Challenge #5; 19. Jug Face (2013); 20. Wake Wood (2009); 21. Happy Death Day (2017); 22. Poltergeist II (1986) - Challenge #6; 23. Wolfman’s Got Nards (2018); 24. Spookies (1986); 25. The Midnight Hour (1985) - Challenge #7; 26. P2 (2007) Challenge #8; 27. Dan Curtis’s Dracula (1973); 28. Interface (1985) - Challenge #9; 29. Occult (2009) - Challenge #10; 30. Pet Sematary (2019) - Challenge #11; 31. From a Whisper to a Scream (1987) - Challenge #12; 32. The She-Creature (1956); 33. Slugs (1988); 34. Halloween II (1981) - Challenge #13
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Nov 1, 2019 17:12
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Random Stranger posted:You're right that it doesn't hurt to plan ahead, though. Having a list of things that you want to watch with some gaps for discovery works really well to keep you on track. Thanks for the tips. One big issue was that it was relatively easy to find out about things that I was interested in and would fit the various challenges, but some of those were impossible to find even at the video rental place nearby that has tons of rare or OOP movies. I didn't focus my searches enough on availability, which led to too much wasted time. I'm totally awe-struck by how many people managed to get to 45, 60, or more movies this year. With a better strategy (and honestly, just waffling less when it comes to getting a movie on), I may be able to get into the 40s next year, but even making it to 31 meant I had to cut out a lot of other activities.
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Nov 1, 2019 19:11
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