50 Nights of Horror Challenge: Weeks Seven and Eight - The Terminus Equation

50 NIGHTS OF HORROR WEEKS SEVEN AND EIGHT!

The past two weeks have been a mess.  I've spread my time between work conferences, hurricanes, and visiting in-laws.  The horror-movie momentum slowed a bit, but I hit my goal of 50 movies, and I've kept pushing.  Today is Halloween, the last day of the challenge.  Looking back, I'm kind of proud of what I've accomplished, but also kind of embarrassed.  Some of these were gems, but many of the movies were garbage.  I really could have spent my time with a better hobby.  Still, there's a good chance I might never have seen some of these films, so I'll take the hit and say that the challenge was worth it.  Also, I've had more blog views than ever before with the challenge, and that is kind of neat.  So I'm doing something right.

Without further adieu, here are the last reviews of the challenge.

Terror Train (1980)
Format:  Bluray
Genre:  Serial Killer
Subgenre:  Murder Mystery, Revenge

With a title like Terror Train, this movie had every right to be awful.  However, it was a really fun post-John Carpenter's Halloween masked killer movie starring Jamie Lee Curtis.  And even though the premise is kind of silly, it doesn't take away from the mood of the movie.

The premise?  These movies have a premise?  Well, many of them don't, but Terror Train's is interesting.  A fraternity's worth of dudes and their girlfriends have a New Year's Eve party every year, and every year the dudes try to throw a better party than the year before.  The movie opens on a New Year's Eve party where several of the frat dudes trick a pledge into making out with the corpse of a dead woman.  Pledge goes nuts. Jamie Lee Curtis screams and cries because of her tertiary involvement in the prank.  Some sexy college babes bounce and jiggle.  And a couple of the frat dudes are implicated as being severe assholes.  All of this happens before the title screen.  And it sets things up nicely.

The bulk of the movie takes place four years later.  The fraternity's New Year's Eve party is taking place on a party train (awesome), and it's a costume party (super convenient for a serial killer), and there's going to be a magician (what?).  And it's not just any magician.  It's David Copperfield!  (wtf)

Because no horror movie is complete without (!!!) illusions...

Before the train even leaves the station, we see there's a killer among the group.  So I'm not ruining anything by telling you that some psychopath is working its way through a hit list.  I'm also not ruining anything if I tell you that the guys that were a-holes at the beginning of the movie haven't achieved any character value during their college years, so they're all a-holes, but to an even great extent now.  So, that's the plot.

The movie itself doesn't have too much gore or nudity.  Most of it is implied, and for that reason I suspect this movie could have been PG.  It was ultimately released with an R rating, but I don't know why.  Yes, the college kids love to drink and screw and listen to rock and roll music ("to hell with you, mom!"), but most of that is shown off camera.  And it doesn't take away from the creepiness or the scares of Terror Train.  It just seems to me that if you're going to limit your audience by earning an R rating, go for it, and earn that R.  Show some guts and blood and boobs.

Conductor conducting.

But that's my only real complaint.  The ending was solid.  The creepiness was there.  The relationships between the characters seemed real enough.  There were some unexplained plot lines and questionable deaths in the movie, but that's ok.  The conductor character was cool, but I don't understand why he was needed in this movie.  I suppose he made for good filler, and a decent source of exposition for the movie.  He's a kind, old man who seems to enjoy having a train full of drunk college kids.

Ultimately, I enjoyed watching this movie.  I was fortunate enough to have good company while I was viewing it (my fellow horror-blogger-adventurer Patrick), and that always helps.  Neither of us could guess at what was coming next.  We both agreed that there was a super creepy shot towards the end of the movie.  Neither of us shivered or jumped at any scares, though.  With that in mind, know that this is an ok horror movie, but not one that demands repeat watchings.  I'm glad I saw it, but I can't imagine buying it.

Prime Evil (1988)

Format:  DVD

Genre:  Devil Cult, Satan

The premise here was promising:  there's an ancient Satanic cult operating within the Catholic church, and its congregation sacrifices their children/grandchildren to Satan in exchange for another "x" amount of years of life.  The problem here is the execution of the movie.  Not a single thing worked.  I suppose that could be blamed on the plot.  It scrambles in two dozen directions and then tries to come back together at the end.  It could also be blamed on the dialogue (at one point a detective tries to halt a psycho killer by saying "stop right there, fart breath").  Or it could be blamed on the god awful acting, the bad logic of the movie, or just the complete waste of everything that this movie is.  Everything is a waste here.  If you couldn't tell, I disliked this one.

For as much of a jumbled mess this movie is, it does follow a pattern that I picked up in some earlier giallo films, though this is no Italian sleaze.  This American sleaze introduces a female, emphasizes her cleavage, then has a killer strip her, beat her, and then take her away.  That is the one consistent theme in this movie.

What is most frustrating about this, though, are all of the interesting ingredients at play.  Imagine giving a chef a cuisine's worth of ingredients and then being handed crap goulash for dinner.  That's what's going on here.  Really cool idea of vampire-like devil cult.  There's a power struggle inside the cult.  The cult has a hypnotized mercenary/serial killer.  The cult is lead by an ancient dude with the powers of charisma/seduction and super strength.  A woman who survived an attempt on her life by the cult grew up to be a nun who wants to infiltrate and take down the cult.  A man is convinced that his fiancee is being seduced by a Satan cult, but he can't convince the police to intervene.

Super-Anti-Priest overpowers super-strong serial killer.  Why?  Unknown.

Any of these could really have been plots in its own movie.  Delicious ingredients for horror movies!  Unfortunately, the director wobbled it all together and effed it all up.  To be fair, the director previously worked on pornographic films, and those movies don't really have plot lines...from what I've been told.  Like a porn (from what I've been told), we're treated to loads of thrilling scenes that aren't particularly coherent.  The ending is bad.  The acting is bad.  I can't believe I have this in my collection.  To be fair, it came in a collection from Anchor Bay, and I had bought that collection for Hell Night (which is a much better film).  If you wanted to see the movie so you can see the Satan(?) puppet featured at the end of the movie, save yourself the trouble.  Here's the demon puppet from the end of the movie.

Satan(?) puppet

Don't Answer the Phone (1980)
Format:  DVD
Genre:  Serial Killer

For the life of me, I can't figure out why the title of this movie is Don't Answer the Phone.  There is one scene here where a woman is surprised by the serial killer when she answers the phone.  But she's not killed because she answered the phone.  She's killed because she was targeted by the killer.  I can only think of one other scene where a phone is involved in a murder.

This movie can be summarized quickly:  a deranged man finds attractive women, kills them, and then sometimes calls in to a radio personality's therapy show using a Spanish accent.  The police try to find him.  The end.

Pardon me.  Could I interest you in not answering the phone?

The killer is a really bad man who loves to deliver WWE-style monologues into thin air.  Sometimes they're directed at his dead parents.  Sometimes they're directed at women (both intangible and tangible).  Sometimes he does this while looking at himself in the mirror.  Sometimes he does this while he's lifting weights.  I don't think we're really given a reason why he does this or why he hates women.  I think it's hinted that he has PTSD.  He also loves pornography.  Maybe this is an extension of his perversion.  I don't know. It doesn't really matter to this movie.

If someone had told me that Lucio Fulci had directed this movie, you might have convinced me.  It is almost identical to the New York Ripper.  I imagine it played in the same grindhouses.  The detectives are just as ignorant.  The music is just as weird.  The audience isn't really sure why the therapist is the main character.  And it has the same senseless violence and nudity.  The biggest differences are the Los Angeles setting (as opposed to NYC) and the fact that the killer is established early on instead of a mysterious POV killer.

I didn't care for the New York Ripper, and I don't much care for this movie, either.  The lead detective/hero of the movie is a very poor actor who tries to make up for his bad acting by making his eyebrows jump all over the place.  His partner is a slime bag who is supposed to be charming.  The biggest joke of the movie comes when the detectives enter a whore house and all of the workers and their johns scramble to run away.  One homosexual man wearing leather, Saran wrap, and a mustache runs to the detectives screaming "It's a raid" before jumping through a window.  Those hilarious, promiscuous homosexual deviants.  What will they think of next?

When I'm not stripping and killing, I'm actually quite pleasant.

Admittedly, the movie does have a minor amount of charm to it.  I mentioned earlier that the killer gives a lot of WWE-style monologues.  I have a sweet spot for 1980's WWF.  Hence, charm.  And this scene where the killer walks into a model's home saying he's been contracted to take pictures of the model.  Not knowing any better, she lets him into the home.  He strips and kills her.  Then he strips and kills her roommate.  But before the killings, he's kind of charming in a 1980's WWF monologue kind of way.

Before I forget, this movie also has Porky from the movie Porky's in it.  He plays a porn publisher.  Done.

The House on Sorority Row (1983)
Format:  DVD
Genre:  Serial Killer

Holy smokes, this was a pleasant surprise!  I really liked this one from top to bottom.  As you can guess with a title like this, there is a squad of beautiful women that undress frequently.  They're each fun characters, though, and each one is being chased by a killer.  The setup is fun, too.

Well this is definitely going to end well.

Before the end of the semester, the girls of Theta Pi are going to throw a party.  They don't have much money, so instead of renting a hall, they're going to throw the party in their sorority house.  What they don't know is that something nutty is going on with their mean, old house mother.  When she tells them NO, they rebel and decide to pull a prank on her.  The prank goes awry, they accidentally shoot her (or do they?), and now they're all implicated in a murder.  So now a dozen disparate girls with their own feelings of guilt have to figure out what to do with their house mother's body all while throwing one hell of a party and while also trying to dodge a killer.  There's also a Dr. Loomis-like character chilling in a background story, and his presence really adds to the suspense.

This movie really encapsulated what I saw on VHS box covers in the local video rental's horror section growing up.  Scary clowns, babes, gore, violence, humor...this kind of movie is worth all of the classless attempts at exploiting it's chemistry.  It could be argued that this is a direct result of the success of Halloween or Friday the 13th.  And that's fair.  But I feel like this is probably one of the premier 80's college slasher movies.  There's just as much Halloween here as there is Meatballs, and that's something that I really appreciate.  I mean, how many movies can you think of where a big scare turns out just to be a drunk fat guy in a swimming pool.  The humor isn't limited to fat guys.  It also plays on the stereotype of sorority girls being susceptible, insecure bimbos, and that's a guilty pleasure of mine.

"I'm a sea pig!"

The gore here is solid.  The tool implemented more than others is the house mother's cane.  Apparently it has a very sharp point, and the point is regularly driven into people's bodies, faces, hands, etc.  And like most good slasher movies, we see an accumulation of bodies towards the end of the movie to show what the killer has been up to.  My favorite scene comes when our heroine is drugged (I won't explain why), but she begins imagining all of the things she's seen in the house since she realized she was being stalked by a killer.

Somebody ate some bad sorority girl.  I bet it was undercooked.

Good gracious.  This movie just hits all the right notes on all the right levels.  The acting is solid.  The conflict is fun to watch.  The situation the girls are in is not really relatable, but you can sympathize with them.  You can also sympathize with whoever is killing them because, well, they're each kind of bitchy.  For one reason or another, they have it coming.

I'm going to buy this for my collection. I liked it that much.  It remains to be seen if I will like the 2009 remake, but I have it kicking around here somewhere...

The Evil Dead (1981)
Format:  DVD
Genre:  Cabin in the Woods
Subgenre:  Haunted House, Demons

So much can be said about this movie.  It is not just one of my favorite scary movies of all time, but it is one of my favorite movies of all time.  This movie is the result of putting together a group of movie-loving dudes with their hearts set on making a movie.  From what I've read, the creators of the Evil Dead franchise originally wanted to make a comedy.  After several meetings, they realized that making a comedy was not financially viable.  Then they realized that they were better at making a horror movie.  After a couple revisions, this was the product they released.  And while there are elements of comedy here, I think it's a pretty damned scary movie, and I love to share it with people with the ONE CAVEAT that they watch the second installment of the movie with me.

There's more I could type about the film, but if you've made it this far in my blog, there's a good chance you've already seen the film.  The Evil Dead franchise is worth a post of its own some day.

Evil Dead 2:  Dead By Dawn (1987)
Format:  Bluray
Genre:  Cabin in the Woods
Subgenre:  Haunted House, Demons

For the 50 movie of my challenge, I watched this movie with my fiancee.  She'd never seen this or the first Evil Dead, so I coordinated to share everything with her.  Unfortunately, she fell halfway through the first Evil Dead.  With that in mind, I poured more than enough alcohol and pushed through.

Where the first installment in the trilogy is pretty scary, this movie mixes the fear and the funny in a way that I had never seen.  It is often imitated, but never truly realized.  Shaun of the Dead has a different sense of humor about it.  Dead Snow is a dear, close imitator of Evil Dead 2, but it uses a bit too much of the Evil Dead 2 gags.  Dead Alive is another great comedy/horror, and it probably comes closest to the Evil Dead 2 vein.  Sam Raimi and Co. released Drag Me To Hell a couple years ago, and it does a great job mingling the scariness with fun, but the one thing missing from that film is a great physical comedian that ED2 has (Bruce Campbell).

Again, I could go on and on about the Evil Deads.  More than anything else, I credit this movie with turning me on to the horror genre in general.  I'll never forget visiting with my friend Patrick in his parents' basement to watch all three movies.  At the time, I wasn't much into horror movies.  The only one I had really seen and enjoyed had been Jaws, Poltergeist, and Scream.  As a kid, I'd been turned onto dark comedies like Ghostbusters, Beetlejuice, Hocus Pocus, and Death Becomes Her, and I'd really embraced those movies.  This was the first movie, though, that sent me spiraling into the horror genre.  After this, I started asking for zombie movies and slashers for Christmas.  I started to read as much as I could about the directors and their works.  Coincidentally, I saw this right around the same time that my parents signed up for AOL.  And wouldn't you know, Evil Dead 2 had quite the online fanbase (and that was quite a feat for 1998).  Since then, the movie has attracted a larger and larger audience.  I'll type more about it at some later date.  But I would be remiss not to gush over the movie.  I love it.  And I couldn't think of a better endcap for the 50 NIGHTS OF HORROR CHALLENGE.

The Initiation (1984)
Format:  Netflix Streaming
Genre:

To be perfectly honest, I jumped into this movie due to how much I enjoyed The House on Sorority Row.  Thirty minutes into the film, though, and I could safely say that this is a much different animal.  After thirty minutes of movie, though, it fails to live up to its promises, and it becomes a movie very much like The House on Sorority Row.  For a while it looked like there were Nightmare on Elm Street-ish dream sequences with dream murders actualized in reality.  Instead, and any casual horror viewer will figure this out, Kelly's "dreams" are actually repressed memories.

Creepy sorority activities?  Creepy sorority activities.

From this point we're given an above-average slasher movie.  The gore is great.  The acting is right where it ought to be for this kind of movie.  There are a handful of neat twists.  Otherwise, though, there's not much that separates this from the pack.  There is one redeeming quality, though:  the horror movie takes a turn and puts the main characters inside a locked shopping mall after hours.  This has been done in Dawn of the Dead and later in Chopping Mall, and I am a sucker for it.

I can't remember the first time I encountered post-apocalyptic themes.  It very well could have been reprints of the EC comic book Weird Science, it could have been any number of comic books or Twilight Zone episodes for that matter.  Regardless, the thought of surviving alone in the world always sounded fun.  I suppose there's something of a Huck Finn aspect to it that sounds like a good challenge.  And when I thought about where I would hole up in some dystopic future, I always thought of hiding in a shopping mall or large retailer (Wal-Mart or Meijer for example).  There's so much to do and so many supplies to hold one over.  And when The Initiation wandered into the survivors-being-stalked-through-an-empty-mall...I got hooked again.

Under NO circumstances should you go to SEARS after hours and screw in the bed department.

There's not much else to be said about the film.  It comes across very similarly to The Houses on Sorority Row.  There's similar humor, similar beautiful women, similar gore.  The aspect that sets THOSR ahead of this is the plot device.  Here we only have college kids running from a killer.  It's not awful, by any means, but it makes you appreciate THOSR that much more.

Penis costume?  Penis costume.

There was one scene in particular from The Initiation that still scares me.  One dude is alone, having imbibed a bit too much, and he decides to shlep to the men's room.  Alone, mid-stream, someone turns the lights out in the bathroom.  To me, that mess is HORRIFYING!  Forget the embarassing fact that one could piss all over themselves, forget that I casually, audibly fart when I'm pissing by myself...someone could EASILY come up behind any man while said man is enjoying the warm release of urination.  It's a simple, fragile pleasure, and it could so easily ruined.  Scary stuff for realz.

Cropsey (2009)
Format:  Netflix Streaming
Genre:  Documentary
Subgenre:  Serial Killer

This is scary because it is true.

It's truly all speculative.  That's the weirdest thing about the movie.  The creators spent 90 minutes (give or take) introducing a real world unsolved mystery with a 110+ creepy factor, and then they keep the damn thing anchored in fact by making sure the viewer knows that everything presented is an urban legend and most of the movie is speculation.

Cropsey grabbed my attention and did not let it go.  The rattles in my spine rattled a bit louder because the urban legend in question took place/takes place in Staten Island.  There is some grim archival footage of Geraldo (?!) exploring an aged asylum.  And that asylum is the breeding ground for the creepy urban legend.

Grim is the best way to describe the documentary.  There are loads of facts here, and ultimately the viewer is given the option to decide how creeped out they want to be with the story.  It's an ala carte horror film.  I can't remember the last really scary documentary I watched.

I do recommend this.  I don't want to reveal too much about the documentary, because it would potentially lead you to do your own online investigation which would ruin the movie.  WATCH IT.  I dare you.  Because, really, the movie is an on-screen dare to go explore an abandoned building.

The Girl (2012)
Format:  TV
Genre:  Historical Drama

The Girl piqued my interest because I'm an Alfred Hitchcock fanatic.  The Girl pissed me off because it paints Alfred Hitchcock as a legit creep instead of a lovable creep.  Toby Jones does an alright job impersonating Hitch, but I've seen too many Toby Jones movies to get past the fact that this is not really Hitch.  Sienna Miller is beautiful, and she does a great job being beautiful.  I can't compare her much to Tippi Hedren because Hedren didn't have much of a career, and I haven't seen her in much.

Mr favorite parts of the film were the recreations of The Birds.  It was well recreated.  I don't know what else to say about it.  The pace of the movie was slow.  There were plenty of nods to other Hitchcock films (particularly Psycho), but I got the impression throughout the movie that it was trying to make Hitch look like the character of Norman Bates.  And for better or for worse, I don't want to see one of my favorite directors/cult figures portrayed as a legit bad guy.  That is my hang up with this movie.

I did jump at one point.  And the movie did make me do some further reading.

Lake Placid (1999)
Format:  TV
Genre:  Monster Movie

Lake Placid is supposed to be a horror comedy.  Unfortunately, the jokes fall flat more often than not, and the relationships that are supposed to be funny between the characters (nobody likes each other) come off more as obnoxious than endearing.  Bill Pullman isn't horrible, but his character is Michael Douglas-light from Romancing the Stone, but without the machismo.  Bridget Fonda is Kathleen Turner-light from Romancing the Stone, but without the sex appeal or sympathy.  Oliver Platt and Brendan Gleeson just deserve better (and both have made much better movies since).

There are true thrills to this movie, but not enough to separate it from any other mid-80's to late-90's major studio monster movie.  It doesn't try to be Jaws, and that's a good thing.  It's more along the lines of Tremors or Critters.  Betty White provides the brightest performance in the film, and that should tell you just about everything you need to know.

Ultimately, this is a fine movie, one that is good to have on in the background while you're only giving it half of your attention.  I will fondly watch this again someday when I'm warming up a frozen pizza in the oven and playing video games on my phone or tablet.

SPOILER:  This movie does get kudos for one sweet scene where the crocodile eats a bear!  BOOMSHAKALA!  My inner 9-year-old fist pumped and played air guitar when this happened!

Cat's Eye (1985)
Format:  VHS
Genre:  Anthology

For a PG-13 horror anthology written by Stephen King, this movie really excelled.  Two of the three episodes were suspenseful tales of violence, danger, and sexiness not unlike what I used to read in old EC comics like The Vault of Horror or Tales of Suspense.  The third episode made me flip out.  To say I liked it was an understatement.  I popped when I saw the mini-monster scooting around Drew Barrymore's bedroom.  I kept looking to Kelley and telling her how scared I would have been if I had seen this as a kid.

A young Displaced Kentuckian would have had nightmares from this story.

Another sweet thing about the film is all of the references to other Stephen King works.  In the first five minutes of the movie we see Cujo and Christine.  And there are other references to The Dead Zone and Pet Semarary if you look for them.  I read online that there's a reference to Maximum Overdrive, but I think it's a loose one.

James Woods - chiseled machismo with a smoking problem.

I've stated before my appreciation for Tales from the Crypt.  This movie seemed like an extension of that ideal.  Short stories with twists and scares and loads of fun.  There was good humor sprinkled throughout these stories and enough tension and conflict to make even Kelley watch with anticipation.  James Woods plays a handsome father/husband, too.  I forget how awesome James Woods is sometimes.  He's a smooth operator here.

So with this grouping of movies I surpassed my goal of 50 horror movies before Halloween.  It was a fun journey, albeit disturbing at times, and I'm sure it's made an impression on my character.  I amassed a large collection of horror VHS tapes and DVDs, and I've received a large number of recommendations for movies to watch.  I'll have to get to them all eventually, and I imagine this type of blog post will continue for a while.

I'll type up a better summary of this experience in the next couple of days/weeks.  For now, though, this is the End.

50 Nights of Horror Challenge: Week Six - Italian Eyeball Violence

50 NIGHTS OF HORROR WEEK SIX!

Instead of keeping a list of the movies I've seen and then wrapping everything up at the end of the week, I'm going to start typing notes as I watch the movies so I can review them more accurately.  We'll see how successful this is.  I fear it might just devolve into me typing and rambling more than usual.

Black Sabbath (1963)
Format:  Netflix Streaming
Genre:  Anthology
Subgenres:  Serial Killer, Vampires, Ghosts, Giallo

Wow.  I've never seen a Boris Karloff movie before, but damn, this guy is just as fun and just as scary as Alfred Hitchcock, Vincent Price, or Peter Cushing.  I toss Hitchcock into the equation because, like AH, Karloff narrates this horror anthology.  Even by 1963 standards, this film is really beautiful.  It's just colorful and creepy and dark (can something be beautifully colorful and simultaneously beautifully dark---I feel like I just asked a question that will launch a goth teen's pubescent rock/YouTube career).

Karloff gonna getchu!

There are three stories at play, one a ghost story, one a serial killer story (more on this later), and one a very effective vampire story.  None of these stories are so gruesome or terrifying that they couldn't be remade into a fun, creepy Doctor Who episode.  In fact, I think each one of these has been remade into an effective Doctor Who episode.  I say that because the production value is that of a Hammer Horror or Amicus film.  That's ok.  I'm not one to complain about 60's horror production values.  It's fun for me to think that my dad was only six when this movie came out, and I imagine a baby Jim crapping his pants if he was to watch this in a movie theater.  And that's quite a compliment to this film.

Even though the effects, gore, and sexuality of this film render it completely suitable for TV, it's still creepy, and a very effective forefather to the Creepshows, Trilogy of Terrors, and V/H/S's of today.  In fact, it was so memorable that some successful rock band from yesteryear named themselves from the title of this movie.  True.  Story.

Ghost from the first story (3rd story in Italian version)

My only complaint about this movie is its movie poster.  The image that Netflix picked for this movie was so negligible that I would probably have never gotten around to seeing it if my friend Patrick hadn't recommended it.  Once I opened that can of worms, though, I was extremely satisfied.  After doing some homework, I actually have a second beef.  According to wikipedia (which is never wrong), the serial killer story had much more subplot and drama in the Italian version.  The American cut of the film leaves out a lesbian lover and revenge kill aspect of the story.  Still...it's still a fun section of the movie.  Just hurts that I missed out on something that I really enjoyed.

The fact that it was directed by Mario Bava coincidentally lines up with the fact that I'm on a tear of loving Italian horror right now.  So this gets a couple bonus points.  Might be hard to knock this movie off the top of the week's list.

Cabin in the Woods (2012)
Format:  Blu-ray
Genre:  THIS MOVIE CANNOT BE CONTAINED BY ANY GENRE

BAM!  This is going to be a tough week to compete for movie of the week!  This movie is smoking awesome.  To be fair, I also saw this movie in theaters on its opening weekend.  AND I subsequently snuck in a pint of bourbon to mix in with my $7 Coke.  AND I watched in the theater with with fellow horror-dork ("dorrork") Mike.  That's an almost insurmountable combination to overcome.

Regardless, even when I watched it at home, the movie still feels fresh and exciting.  Cabin in the Woods encompasses just about everything that I love about the horror genre.  And it's so difficult to describe on a blog.  The best I can do is repeat what I told Mike as the movie rolled through its credits:

"How can anyone imagine that?  How does that kind of story slip into any person's mind?  HOW DO YOU GET THERE?!"

It is a really great movie that blows the roof off of the entire horror genre.  There's something here for just about anyone that enjoys scary movies.  And after seeing it in the movie theater I still jumped.  And I still left wishing that there was still another two hours of movie to watch.  The last thirty minutes will blow your mind.

The Beyond (1981)
Format:  Borrowed
Genre:  Haunted House
Subgenre:  Demons, Zombies, Hell, Giallo

Dude!  Apparently I need to watch more giallo films, because this one was really entertaining from front to back.  Like some of my other favorite giallo films ("Giallo" is Italian for "yellow," stemming from the mystery/horror/fiction genre of cheap paperback novels that all shared yellow covers), there isn't much of a succinct story here.  In fact, it can be summed up in one sentence:  woman inherits old New Orleans hotel and inadvertently opens gateway to hell.  There's not much to chew on here.  That being said, there are tons of gory deaths as demons torture and kill even the most cursory movie characters.

For as much as I thought Pulse had potential to grow if it had more "throw-away" characters with throw-away deaths, this movie (typical of 80's giallo) has a a disproportionate amount of characters being killed without much story.  If only Pulse and The Beyond could meet in a happy middle, it could make for one hell of a movie!

Spooky stuff, folks.

Before I go any further, I should admit to being a huge fan of Sam Raimi's Evil Dead franchise.  I love each installment, albeit for very different reasons.  The creepiness of the first Evil Dead was kind of a high-water mark for me in middle-high school.  I've seen that darn movie at least a dozen times.  Watching The Beyond, I can see that Raimi must have drawn at least a little inspiration from Fulci.  The deaths, the gore, the camera angles...it's all there.

Oh, Hai!

The scary elements?  Ghosts, zombies, the physically handicapped, dogs, sewage.  What more could you ask for?  A fleshed-out story that brings all of these elements together?  What do you want?!  Sense and Sensibility?!  Geddowdaheer!

The New York Ripper (1982)
Format:  Borrowed
Genre:  Serial Killer, Giallo

As far as my recent viewings of giallo are concerned, this is by far the least impressive.  It's sillier than the other movies, and really just unnecessary.  Horror fans may recall that this is the movie with a serial killer with the Donald Duck voice.  No kidding.

There is gore aplenty here, and nudity, too.  In fact, there is so much nudity and raw sexuality in this movie mixed with violence and gore that it feels like the first movie I've ever seen that could actually deserve the modern equivalent of an X-rating.  Back in the day, X-ratings were given kind of indiscriminately.  This one, though...wow.  And it wouldn't earn the rating for the gore/violence, and not necessarily for the sexuality.  But for the liberal application of both without hesitancy....it makes for a tough film to watch.

I would give credit to the script for being a murder/mystery at its core, but the detective work employed in the movie is almost non-existent.  The detective, Lieutenant Fred Williams, is given a murder case, and reviewing the case, the pathologist tells the detective that this is a similar style of murder to two other bodies he'd recently observed.  MUST BE A SERIAL KILLER.  From this point, the detective visits several "experts" that are all wrong at different points in the film.  It's not until the end that there's any real indication that anybody knew what the hell they were talking about.

The lone point of interest for me in this movie was seeing the director's vision of 1982 New York City.  I've said it before, but I'm a sucker for movies set in New York now that I live here.  The subway, the skyline, the dark streets, Times Square...they're all here, and each is interesting to look at.  But it's the history that has piqued my interest.  Not the gross story.  This is still not as awful as Street Trash, but it is pretty bad, and The New York Ripper makes a greasy, nasty slide in that direction.

Children Shouldn't Play With Dead Things (1972)
Format:  VHS
Genre:  Zombies

This trailer gives one the impression that they're going to watch a funny, grim movie about witchcraft, zombies, and maybe necrophilia.  One is lead to believe there will be many things bumping in the night.  unfortunately, that is not the case here.

Creepiest part of the movie is a ham-fisted monologue directed to Satan.

I read that this movie has a lot of dedicated fans.  Me?  I just don't see it.  The scariness doesn't come until there are less than 20 minutes left in the movie.  Before that point, we're treated to a slew of obnoxious characters that all seem to try to one-up each other in the shit-eating-grin and bad jokes department.  One character in particular hams it up with horrible forced laughter to the point that you want the character to get eaten by zombies immediately.

Therein lies a micro amount of charm in this movie, I suppose.  Each character is flawed to the point of being unlikable.  So the buildup, then, because anticipating when the corpses (really the victims of this movie) will get their revenge on these college-aged a-holes.  I only wish the corpses had started their revenge a bit earlier in the movie.  Like maybe 30 minutes earlier.  The characters are almost immediately recognizable as jackasses.  Additional exposition to the levels of their jackassery was really not needed.  They were established idiots after 20 minutes into the film.  Might as well start hacking and slashing them shortly thereafter.  No such luck, though.

Zombies!  Yes!  Too bad there are only ten minutes left in the movie...

The other cool note about this movie is that the actor that played the ringleader of this squad was also the special effects guy.  This is a very low-budget horror movie, so set your expectations low.  And its actually pretty OK for the money this team was given to work with.  The zombies don't look great, but they look...OK.  It's really the characters and the pace of conflict that ruined the movie for me.  I don't hate it, but I certainly am not going to put this towards the top of my list.  Worth seeing once.  But don't let the cool poster and trailer fool you.

Christine (1983)

Format:  Borrowed

Genre:  Killer Car

Christine has so much going for it, it was going to be impossible for me not to like it.  Based on a novel by Stephen King.  Excellent.  Directed by John Carpenter.  Also excellent.  1980s horror.  Turbo excellente!

As far as killer car movies go, this is the best I've ever seen (also:  only).  Setting realistic expectations, this is a movie about a sentient, self-healing, evil car that influences it's owner/driver to do bad things.  If you can swallow that fact, the rest of the movie is really good.  If you can't get over that fact, then you might as well pass this up.  Think of it as the antithesis of Herbie, the Love Bug.

Holy crap.  That is one evil looking car.

What we get outside of the car is solid participating from everyone involved.  The special effects are really cool.  The gore is more implied than it is shown (and in this case, that's ok).  The acting is better than average.  And I give a lot of that credit to John Carpenter (who held it all together) and Stephen King (for turning in a story about the usual high school kid that experiences a lot of dark stuff).

There's not too much gore here, and not much nudity (if any).  There are some beautiful damsels in distress.  There are solid relationships between all of the characters.  There are some creepy people (including evil-John Travolta-ish guy).  There are some lovable losers.  And there's also Harry Dean F'n Stanton!  BOOM!

William Ostrander.  AKA: Evil John Travolta-ish Guy

Ultimately, any horror buff should be able to find something enjoyable here.  There are realistic plot elements to be appreciated.  There are some completely unrealistic plot elements to be enjoyed.  Something for everyone.  And even a killer car to boot.

Also, kudos to this movie for having such a bad-ass soundtrack album art.  Most of the music is probably John Carpenter's unsurprising synth music.  But still.  Badass cover.

Alice, Sweet Alice (1976)

Format:  DVD
Genre:  Serial Killer

Full disclosure:  Brooke Shields is only in this movie for the first 15 minutes.  She is then brutally murdered.  This is a picture of her corpse:

Brooke Shields has certainly looked better...

If you wanted to see a young, pre-pubescent Brooke Shields do something sexy in a movie (a la Blue Lagoon...never seen it), look elsewhere.  This is a genuinely creepy movie about a spitfire of a little girl that is honest-to-goodness bad.  But is she serial-killer-bad?  That's what you try to figure out in this movie.  She does lie.  And steal.  And sneak.  And torture her fat, no-good, waste of a landlord.  But would she resort to murdering him?  Would she resort to murdering a sister that is favored over her?  That's the question this movie is all about answering.

I was pretty freaked out by the opening credits.  The Hail Mary prayer is whispered over and over again before a shadowed figure begins stabbing at the camera.  The Hail Mary was the prayer my mom always had me say when I was scared as a child.  And hearing that prayer over and over just bothered the crap out of me.

The movie is really creepy.  There's gore here.  There are gross characters aplenty...the kind you can't wait to see earn their comeuppance.  I even caught myself rooting against the wholesome mom and stepdad simply for their poor parenting skills.  That being said, I'm sure that alone is not going to be enough for the majority of horror geeks to get on board with this movie.  It's still a goody that I recommend, but not one I suspect will be universally appealing.

Trilogy of Terror (1975)
Format:  Borrowed
Genre:  Anthology


This is an odd-ball.  That might sound odd in a forum that's all about oddball horror movies, but this one sticks out for one bizarre reason.  This was a made-for-TV movie-of-the-week on ABC back in 1975.  And it was never meant to be an anthology film.  It was actually three pilot episodes for what was supposed to be a horror TV show like the Twilight Zone or Tales from the Crypt.  So it couldn't be too scary or too gory.  It was shown on ABC during primetime.  So this film has a lot of restrictions working against it.

That being said, it's still pretty graphic with what is implied.  Of the three stories, we have off-camera rape, murder, incest, and potentially gore and demonic possession.  All three stories/episodes star Karen Black in all of her Karen Blackness.  I can't tell how pretty Karen Black is.  That's my one complaint against her.  And it's not a fair one.  She's a fine actress, and she pulls off everything well enough.  But I get confused, because she was a really hot teacher/professor, but she also looks kind of weird when you notice her cross-eyes or her extremely defined features.

"Prey" is the third, scariest episode.  It is also the most notorious.  It centers around Karen Black accidentally unleashing an evil Zuni hunter spirit from it's doll-shaped prison.  The Zuni doll then hunts Karen Black throughout her apartment, trying to kill her.  The special effects aren't all there, but the camera angles and the editing still make this a creepy one.  Imagine all of the best scary scenes from movies like Gremlins or Critters, and condense them into a 20 minute story.  That's what this is.  Without any character development.  It's a chase scene with our heroine trying to escape an inanimate-yet-sentient statue with a knife.

"Prey" was also the story that had picture gracing the VHS box of Trilogy of Terror.  And that movie box scared the hell out of me when I was a kid.  So when I finally sat down to watch this last night, I was kind of let down about how NOT scary it was.  As I said earlier, that can't really be helped.  It was an ABC flick.  And I imagine it was re-released and put at the front of my video rental store's horror section because of the success of the Gremlins, Critters, and Ghoulies of the store.

ODD NOTE:  The actors in this movie had the worst haircuts I've ever seen in a movie.  They were all just really awful.

House by the Cemetery (1981)
Format:  Borrowed
Genre:  Serial Killer, Haunted House

OK...I think I've seen enough giallo movies now at this point.  And this is a good one to end on.  Of the three Fulci films I watched this week, this was by far the creepiest and the most linear.  The story was much easier to follow, the ending made much more sense, and the pace of the movie matched the character development, the drama, and the gore.  This was much more balanced than The Beyond, and I really liked that movie.  There were a couple loose ends that I didn't quite grasp (why does everyone think they've seen the father before?), but that didn't present too much of a problem to the film's story.

This is a pretty and scary scene.

Like the other Fulci movies, there is some very bad editing here, some odd dialogue, random plot points, and a peculiar amount of peppy music in an otherwise gloomy, grim part of the movie.  I've noticed this about The Beyond and The New York Ripper, too.  We'll go from a gory, depraved scene to an ambient shot of the environment or a character walking around in public, and the music goes from dark and gory to light and pleasant, not unlike the music you would hear before a 1970's weather report from the local TV news channel.  Sorry...I digress.

Notice the eye damage.  Not sure why I didn't see this go down.

ODD NOTE:   I suspect the version I watched was heavily edited.  Fulci was beating the hell out of eyeballs in the other movies I watched this week.  And here I saw corpses with damage to the eye area, but none of that violence took place on screen.  And that leads me to believe those scenes were chopped out.

Solid, genuine child fear here.

The child acting in this movie is solid.  The boy and girl have dubbed over voices, but damn it, when they scream, you can see the fear in their poor, young eyeballs.  The gore is typically over-the-top.  The monsters are awesome here.  I don't want to spoil it for anyone.  The backstory of a haunted house is pretty neat.  There's nothing brand new here, and it's not mind-bending like The Beyond, but it's still a neat scary story.  This is the one giallo movie that I've seen that I would like to add to my collection for repeat viewing.  I would be ok buying The Beyond, but House by the Cemetery is the cream of this Italian crop so far.

You wanna dance?  How about a little...polka!

This movie literally opens with a fun scare and closes with an even more fun scare.  I really got behind this one.  There are loads of fun, scary scenes, the kind that would scar my sisters if I had shown this to them when we were all younger living with my parents.  Bats have never looked simultaneously so fake and yet so terrifying.

50 Nights of Horror Challenge: Week Five - Unmarried Bride Witch Eats Topless Japanese Girls

50 NIGHTS OF HORROR WEEK FIVE!

The weather has changed.  It is beginning to get dark earlier.  It has been consistently gloomy and chilly.  Goosebumps are forming naturally.  This is perfect weather for scary movies.  And the past week my friends and I watched some very appropriately spooky titles.

Cronos (1993)
Format:  Borrowed
Genre:  Vampires

In the same vein of Let The Right One In (but predating that movie by about 20 years), Cronos is a vampire movie that is more than just a vampire movie.  There's a lot of humanity in the film's star, a conflicted man who accidentally tumbles into a curse, initially loves the thought of immortality, but then struggles against the inherent moral consequences of living forever.  All that and there's a family of bad guys out to get him.

Frederico Luppi is the veteran actor who shines in the film as a grandfather that stumbles on a legendary device with dark implications.  The little machine is creepy as hell, kind of like the floating murder ball from Phantasm.  Luppi's character has a granddaughter that does things that granddaughters do in movies.  She plays, looks cute, and assists her grandfather.  They make a cute pairing, and because they're so cute together, it's a bit of a surprise when the movie throws them for some dark loops.

Not only is the machine itself evil, but it comes with some evil baggage in the form of a heartless villain that has been hunting for this artifact for years.  When a clue finally falls into his possession, he sends his nephew, an even more-heartless punk who has eyes on his uncles' fortune.  The actor that plays this punk?  RON F'N PERLMAN.

RON F'N PERLMAN

As bad as Ron Perlman's character is, he's also the most charismatic and fun to watch on screen.  He's a well-written character.  He lusts for power and money, but he also has the youthful energy to play with the grand daughter and coerce the shopkeeper to reveal some nuggets about the antique machine he's looking for.  On one hand he's a gentle crooner.  On the other, he'll kick the sh!t out of old men in a restaurant bathroom. He's creep candy.  I love Ron Perlman.

This movie really works.  There was plenty of gore and more than enough mind-fudging.  Guillermo del Toro really kicked butt with his feature film debut.  It definitely set him up for success with his subsequent releases (Mimic, Hellboy, Blade 2, Pan's Labyrinth, and the Devil's Backbone which I will watch before the dust settles).  I recommend this one.  Not too scary or gory for the uninitiated to enjoy, too.

Dream House (2011)
Format:  Cinemax
Genre:  Ghosts
Subgenre:  Psychological Thriller

Umm...I kind of liked this movie more than I should have.  I credit that to the cast.  Namoi Watts kicked butt as usual.  She's just a powerhouse of an actress.  Here she's "good creepy."  Daniel Craig was...nnhhh...ok.  He's not given too much to work with.  Rachel Weisz, like Craig is...nnhhh...ok.  She does a good job with what she's given.  The entire movie is just that...ok for what it is.  There's not much here that hasn't been done before, and done better at that.  The trailer led me to believe that this was going to be really creepy.  The Ring creepy.  But it's not by any means.  It starts spooky and devolves into something else entirely.  Not a bad movie at all if you have nothing better to do before football comes on some Sunday afternoon.

Pulse (1988)
Format:  VHS
Genre:  PG-13 Horror

There was a lot of potential for this movie to scare the hell out of people.  If the main character was an adult and there were plenty of tertiary characters that could easily meet grisly, electric deaths this movie might have generated quite an audience.  What I saw, instead, is a horror movie with a pre-teen Joey Lawrence (Blossom) in the lead, and there is no gore, there are no grisly electric deaths, and nobody central to the plot dies.  Spoiler?  I suppose so.  But then, you're watching a PG-13 movie about a boy fighting sentient electricity.  The movie's trailer is deceptively scary.

Joey Lawrence vs. Electricity

That's not to say that this movie is completely devoid of spooks and startles.  Like I said, it had a lot of potential to generate a cult following.  The bad guy?  There is none!  The villain is some rogue, sentient electricity that lands in a community's power lines after a thunderstorm.  It decides to start killing people by manipulating their home appliances (none of them are General Electric...trust me...I checked this diligently).  Instead of just zapping them through their power outlets, the electricity begins by simply f^cking with their water temperature, their garage doors, their televisions, and in an ultimate psych-out, it changes the time on their VCRs (not really)!

There's a creepy wizard-like character that pops in and out of the film for no good reason.  He appears to have some inside knowledge of the killer volts, but not really.  The film leaves it open as to whether he was knowledgeable or just nuts.

Magical or nuts?  It doesn't really matter.

I feel bad that this movie starred Joey Lawrence.  It could have been so much better if a kid wasn't in the middle of it.  Teenager?  Could have made it so much better.  Ultimately the film suffers from not enough scares.  It's really, really solid for what it is.  But what it is is a horror movie that could be shown unedited on Nickelodeon or ABC Family during Halloween.  And that is NOT good enough for me...usually (Hocus Pocus and Beetlejuice are bad ass, y'all).

Alone in the Dark (1982)

Format:  DVD

Genre:  Serial Killer(s)

Jack Palance.  Martin Landau.  Donald Pleasance.  Dynamo from The Running Man.  A creepy daughter.  Dude, that should be enough for you to see this film!  Each one of the actors listed has the potential to be creepy.  You know you watched City Slickers and just waited for Curly to lose his sh!t.  Martin Landau always looks crazy.  Take those actors and let them run loose like killer maniacs and...well..that's kind of the basis of this movie.

I'm so happy to have found this movie!

Murdock from the A-Team plays a psychologist hired to work in a very progressive asylum.  Donald Pleasance plays the progressive doctor glue that keeps an asylum's worth of maniacs held together.  He coddles them and works with them inside the terms of their own neuroses.  This freaks out the newly-hired doctor, but slowly he comes to terms with the unusual treatments.  When Martin Landau freaks out and sets his jacket on fire, Pleasance whispers something in his ear to calm Landau down.  "What did you tell him, doctor?"  Pleasance's response:  "I told him that if he didn't stop, I was going to string his up by his ankles and then chop him from groin to forehead with a butcher's cleaver."  "oh."

Calmer than you are, Dude.

The good doctor's progressive asylum houses all of the inmates with electric sensors.  There are no locks or bars or cells or padded rooms.  Everyone is housed in their own space without any physical impositions.  If they try to go outside of their space, though, the electric sensors close the doors and windows and alarms ring.  One night, and I'm not giving too much away here, a storm knocks out the power, and the inmates go nuts.

That could be a fun movie on its own.  Release inmates on unsuspecting town.  Watch violence.  Roll credits.  But no...the movie takes a more interesting turn.  The most violent of the inmates are under the incorrect impression that Dr. Murdock (not his real name) has killed their previous doctor.  As an act of revenge, they will find where he lives and murder him and his family.  Then all will be right with the world.  And after meeting the doctor's family (especially his daughter), you find yourself kind of cheering for the inmates.

Martin Landau - forever nuts

The movie features some incredible twists, some extremely cool deaths, some very nice babysitter boobies, and just about anything else you'd want to see in a serial killer flick.  I am very satisfied by this one.  Recommend it to anyone and everyone.  And Dynamo from Running Man, you made an awesome killer.  R.I.P., big man.

Dynamo from Running Man - gentle giant and serial killer

V/H/S (2012)

Format:  DVD

Genre:  Anthology

Whew!  This one had a little bit of everything that I love about scary movies!  I was legitimately scared during this viewing.  I also laughed.  I cringed.  I wanted to scream at the TV for the characters to run.  So good!  I'm a sucker for found footage films (The Blair Witch Project, Cloverfield, [REC], etc.), and this is essentially a bunch of mini-horror-found-footage films strung together.  Each of the mini-films have their own strengths and weaknesses, but I enjoyed each one from front to back.  The over-arching story of the film leaves it open to multiple sequels, and I would love to see more come out.  I am putting this movie towards the top of my list for the challenge.  Extremely well done.  The definite winner for this week.

House (1977)
Format:  Borrowed
Genre:  Haunted...House

This might be the most Japanese thing I've ever seen.  I watched it on Monday night, and I've pondered about it since then.  I still can't wrap my head around it, but I can kind of get where its cult audience came from.  Since I can't completely comprehend it, I'll throw out some bullet points.  You, the reader, should take these points, put them in your imaginary blender, chop everything up and mash it together, stir fry it, serve it on a plate crafted from human bone, and eat it.  Then you'll understand (maybe):

• Scooby Doo and the Mystery Gang
• The Rocky Horror Picture Show
• Spice World
• Evil Dead 2
• LSD
• Any side-scrolling Konami video game
• Hentai pornography
• The Little Rascals
• Hannibal Lecter
• this music video (here)
• McDonaldland
• The Beatles "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band"
• Poltergeist

It's all way too screwed up to nail down.  I can't say whether or not I recommend it, either.  The critics that adopted it and loved it when it was released in America 25 years after it's original release in Japan are probably pretentious a-holes.

The Town that Dreaded Sundown (1976)

Format:  Borrowed

Genre:  Serial Killer

Here's a SUPER creepy serial killer movie based on a true story.  Unfortunately, most of the movie is a convoluted mess, and the Phantom Killer doesn't show up nearly as often as he ought to.  To make matters worse, there's a narrator that cuts into the movie in between killings to give us an update (un-horror-ific), there are scenes with a Barney Fife character doing things that just aren't funny at all, and the ending, indicative of the overall movie, leaves us wanting more killer.

Based in Texarkana, TX shortly after World War II, a series of violent murders stumps police.  Someone out there is putting on a mask and murdering people every three weeks.  All bets are off, too, because the killer murders all kinds of people in all kinds of different ways (knife, gun, trombome, etc.).  The police can't pin him down, and they have very few clues to work with.  Not to mention there's some dumb sh!t on the police force that keeps bumbling and making dumb jokes.

This movie has Texas Chainsaw potential.  But it's ultimately pretty bad.  I watched a VHS copy that must have been old, because it was too dark to see a good deal of the movie.  Hope it gets released on DVD or Blu-ray soon, because it will not hold up well otherwise.  I understand this movie has its fans.  I don't really understand how.  People are weird.  It's not the worst, but it's not good enough to stay in the middle of the pack.  Sorry The Town That Dreaded Sundown.

the scariest trombone player you'll ever see

This was a good week for movies.  It helped that I got to share the majority of them with friends (fellow horror-loving dorks).  I've amassed a sizable collection that should keep me busy for quite a while.  The fiancee is tolerating this habit.  Damn the torpedoes.  Full horror speed ahead.