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50 NIGHTS OF TERROR WEEK TWO |
The second week of horror movies proved to be significantly better than the first week. Less stinkers. More chillers. More tingly hairs standing on end. This week was so, so much better. I'm more encouraged that I can get through this...
The Faculty (1998)
Format: DVD
Genre: Aliens
Subgenre: Teenagers, Humor
I can totally understand how this movie could be overlooked. It came out in the midst of Screams, I Know What You Did Last Summers, and Urban Legends. This film features an ensemble cast of teenaged stars of teen dramas and dramedies (Elijah Wood, Josh Hartnett, Jordana Brewster, Clea Duvall, Usher, etc.). The casual observer might draw these similarities and skip over The Faculty very easily.
However, one thing those other movies didn't have was one of my favorite directors, Robert Rodriguez (Planet Terror, Machete, From Dusk Till Dawn, Desperado, etc.). And good, dependable Robert Rodriguez stacked the movie with a ton of supporting actors like Selma Hayek, Famke Janssen, Robert Patrick, and a memorable John Stewart).
With a screenplay by Scream scribe Kevin Williamson, The Faculty comes together as a witty, creepy re-interpretation-slash-homage to Invasion of the Body Snatchers. Like other high school movies, the regular themes of dealing with bullies, coming of age, and finding one's place in the world are all here, but they're all filtered through the context of aliens killing your friends and family. It's a lot of fun, and I watch this movie annually.
Child's Play (1988)
Format: Netflix Streaming
Genre & Subgenres: Slasher/Ghost/Killer Dolls
For the uninitiated, check out this Youtube clip that pretty much summarizes what the Child's Play franchise is all about:
There are some genuinely eerie scenes in this movie. I think its safe to say that the star of the show is Chucky (did you know he's voiced by/acted by Brad Dourif?). The special effects that animate the doll are pretty awesome. The child acting in this movie is decent. The super-mega-star of this movie is without a doubt Chris Sarandon. He is such a boss. I can't imagine it's easy to act with a child, let alone with a child's doll, but man does he pull it off. So cool.
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| Chris Fucking Sarandon |
At its heart, this is not a ghost movie...or a thrasher movie...or a cute killer monster movie (Gremlins, Critters, Ghoulies, etc.). It is a delicious goulash of all three genres. And it is definitely worth watching. There are rumblings of this movie being remade. I really hope it isn't.
Fun Note: This movie was directed and co-written by Tom Holland, the writer/director of Fright Night. It's a shame that this guy doesn't have more notoriety. I just learned that he also wrote The Beast Within and Psycho II, both of which are on my watchlist....
Child's Play 2 (1990)
Format: VHS
Genre & Subgenres: Slasher/Ghost/Killer Dolls
This I could have done without. There isn't much ground uncovered here. Chucky is rebuilt by the toy manufacturer that built the original Good Guy dolls in an attempt to figure out why their toy is associate with the bad events of the first movie. The nobody-believes-the-young-boy theme is rehashed. Chris Sarandon does not reprise his role. This movie plays very much like the first one, but with more death scenes.
There is one cool scene where the boy and his female companion are being chased through the toy factory by Chucky. It leads to this gore, which is creepier the more I look at it:
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| Career highlight. |
Fun Note: this movie cover scared the crap out of me when I was a little kid.
Copycat (1995)
Format: VHSGenre: Mystery
Subgenre: Female vs. Serial Killer
It is not easy to convince females to join in on the Nights of Horror Challenge. Not easy one bit. But it did lead to a good conversation between my fiancee and I. She's not a fan of "unrealistic, goofy" horror movies. But she did admit to having that guilty pleasure of being scared by realistic killer movies. She has told me repeatedly that Copycat was one movie that stuck in her head as being really scary. So without her knowing, I bought a VHS copy of the movie and surprised her with it one night. We settled down with a bowl of popcorn and got down to it.
I would like to say that this movie is derivative of Silence of the Lambs, complete with Holly Hunter's take on Jodie Foster's Clarice Starling. That's not necessarily a bad thing, though. Both Foster and Hunter were charming female detectives going after a serial killer. But this isn't really bad. There were some good thrills here, and I couldn't help but try to figure out who the killer was before he was introduced. I failed.
I also failed to recognize Harry Connick Jr. at all. He plays a seriously bastard, and I couldn't tell it was him until the credits ran. There's enough here to make it a watchable flick.
| I'm by no means a Harry Connick Jr enthusiast, but I didn't recognize him for anything. |
That being said, this movie helped me make a grand discovery. This movie, like Silence of the Lambs, Kiss the Girls, and Along Came a Spider, all have a similar core (strong female lead flips the script and stalks the serial killer in a role reversal). And this similar core carries over into shows like Law & Order where Mariska Hargitay discovers a crime scene, is baffled and threatened by the criminal, and ultimately subdue the criminal with a nice, neat wrap by episode's end. There's a tickle of violence and gore, a pinch of female empowerment, and nobody too important kicks the bucket. When I figured this out, I like this movie a little less.
Ghosthouse (1988)
Format: Borrowed
Genre: Haunted House
Subgenre: throw everything at the wall and hope it sticks, Killer Doll
I've thought about this movie many times after finishing it. It is not a good movie. There is no good acting. The death scenes are pretty silly. This guy shows up at the end out of nowhere and proves to do nothing more than have eyeballs full of maggoty wormy things:
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| Somebody made a kick ass mask for this movie, and it was completely wasted. |
The beginning of this movie showed so much promise. A strict, religious bastard of a father hears a weird, repeating jingle. He follows the sound and discovers the family cat disemboweled. He accuses his poor daughter and locks her in the basement. He and his wife are violently killed.
INTERESTING. TELL ME MORE.
The rest of this movie is a mess. A ham radio operator and his foreign exchange student girlfriend hear a weird radio signal and follow it to an abandoned house. They pick up some dick of a hitchhiker, and then drop him off. They get to the house, find it abandoned, but then find another group vacationing on the same property for some reason. They proceed to investigate the house, and for another odd reason, they refuse to pack their shit up and leave when they start getting killed by mysterious circumstances one by one.
Here's how the conversation would go if I was involved:
Me: I'm on vacation, and I don't want to spend it staying with a group of strangers, let alone in some empty, creepy house.
Stranger: But my sister just died in there due to some unseen force!
Me: That sucks. I'm out of here.
Stranger: Don't you want to investigate the history of this house and figure out what it was that killed her?
Me: I'm a ham radio operator on vacation. What part of that story makes you think I'm Van Helsing? I'm going to ham radio operate my ass back home.
That being said, and as awful as this movie is, it sticks with me. I think it would make an awesome Nintendo game. It would also make a sweet ride at an amusement park. I can imagine a Ghosthouse - The Ride! at Coney Island. As a coherent movie, though, it fails. It fails on so many levels.
Black Death (2010)
Format: Netflix Streaming
Genre: Medieval Times
Subgenre: Contagion, Witches
I was never really anxious or scared during this movie. As a horror movie, it's not too scary. As a period piece that delves into man's relationship with his religion, it's ok. A little too violent for that theme, but then again, what do you expect out of a movie called Black Death? There are a couple brutal scenes here, and a scant tease at witchery. It's not a bad movie by any means, but not one I would have chosen for the 50 Nights of Horror Challenge if I had known how non-scary it is.
Sean Bean is in it. He just can't win. I bet if I went into this one knowing more about what its intentions were, I would have liked it much more.
Madhouse (1974)
Format: Netflix Streaming
Genre: Serial Killer
Subgenre: Hammer/Amicus
This was a fun Amicus horror movie that served as a tribute to Vincent Price more than anything. Like most Amicus and Hammer horror movies from this era there are loads of beautiful women, funny looking blood baths, and fun acting. This really is a tribute to Vincent Price. There's an interesting idea here of the character he's played in a horror franchise, Doctor Death, overtaking the actor. It's been done before, and it's been done since, but not by Vincent Price, and not with the surprise ending we get.
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| Doctor Death - pretty badass. |
Format: Borrowed
Genre: Monster Movie
Subgenre: Sasquatch, Kids In Nature
As far as zero-budget horror movies go, this might be the best one I've ever seen. I did some reading and found that this belongs in the Sasquatchploitation subgenre. This may be my new favorite term. All I know is that if my group of friends and I went out into the woods to make a horror movie about Sasquatch, it would be very similar to this. The makers of this movie deserve to be very proud.
It's extremely gory, but cheesy gory. A biker gets his penis ripped off, but it's not treated as a goof like it was in Street Trash. Two girl scouts are manhandled and accidentally kill each other. Limbs are ripped off. In one of the more memorable scenes, a guy zipped up in his sleeping bag is twirled, tossed, and eventually meets his end at Bigfoot's hands.
There's nothing particularly scary about this movie. It's just a lot of fun. And I have to imagine that is what the makers wanted. Sasquatch isn't given significant screen time until towards the end of the movie. He rapes a villager. He squashes a cabin full of students. Before this, he's only shown in quick shots, and he is inferred when the movie goes into "SasquatchVision." The audience sees the movie through Sasquatch's point of view. It's a fish-eye lens with a red filter. If Bigfoot is really out there, I hope this is really how he sees the world.
Pontypool (2008)
Format: Netflix Streaming
Genre: Zombies
Subgenre: Thought-Provoking, Isolation
This movie was really cool. Essentially, it is a zombie movie, though it's not particularly gory, and I didn't see a single bite or slash or tear. I won't ruin how the zombie virus transmits itself, you really ought to see that for yourself. The movie predominantly takes place in a radio station with a shock jock interacting with a zombie-infected city via his radio program and people calling in. Pretty darn cool. To say much more about it would be spoiling things.
Apparently, this is based on a very mind-blowing book. I don't have the courage to read it. But I probably should.
Monkey Shines (1988)
Format: Netflix Streaming
Genre: Creature Feature
Subgenre: Telepathy, Isolation
As much as I wanted to really enjoy this George Romero movie, I have to admit that it just didn't trip my trigger. I'm not sure what I expected based on the short description that Netflix provided:
Quadriplegic law student Allan Mann (Jason Beghe) gets in-home care from Ella, a supersmart monkey injected with human brain tissue. Initially, it's a dynamite relationship -- until she starts anticipating Allan's thoughts and acting out his subconscious desires. Horror veteran George Romero wrote and directed this 1988 chiller, which co-stars Joyce Van Patten, Stanley Tucci and Janine Turner.
From what I can gather, Romero submitted the movie to the studio, and they chopped and re-chopped it into a very unfrightening movie. And that is a shame. There is one good solid ending here, though. And a young Stanley Tucci is really fun to watch here.
The Prowler (1981)
Format: Borrowed
Genre: Slasher
Subgenre: College, Serial Killer
This movie was super, super sweet. It would have been a regular, run-of-the-mill 80's slasher, but between Tom Savini's special effects and Joe Zito's direction the movie really does set itself apart. The kills are pretty original, the chase scenes are legitimately cringe-inducing, and the backstory is pretty fun. I don't know why this wasn't turned into a franchise. I put it and the original Valentine's Day up there as two of my favorites.
So there you have it. Eleven more down. Thirty-three horror movies to go.
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