50 Nights of Horror Challenge: Week Three - Crazy Irish Warlock Dollmakers Plot to Take Over the World!

50 NIGHTS OF TERROR WEEK THREE

Week three.  A couple hits.  A couple misses.  This is the first week that any of these movies really forced me to emote.  Two movies touched me (as much as a horror movie can).

Rammbock - Berlin Undead (2010)
Format:  Netflix Streaming
Genre:  Zombies


This poor dude.  Poor Michael goes to surprise his girlfriend and amend what was some sort of romantic problem.  In a very intense introduction we find a handyman and a handyman's assistant working alone in Michael's girlfriend's apartment.  Michael is understandably confused.  Hell, I would be, too.  The handyman is apparently infected with a zombie virus and...WE'RE IN TO THE MOVIE.

From there we experience many of the typical zombie themes.  The level of isolation that these characters deal with is unique in that they're in an apartment complex that has a gated court entrance in the middle of the development.  The neighbors mostly have line of sight into each other's apartments as well as the court area.  Whispering to each out from window to window is the only form of communication they have.  And this presents a fun problem for the survivors.

view of the courtyard

I won't ruin any more of this movie, but I will say that the ending was very satisfying.  I would recommend this as a solid zombie movie to those that don't typically check out the genre.  I say that not only because of the fairly basic rules of zombie that the movie employs, but also because the movie only runs for 60 minutes.  It's not tasking a casual viewer with a big, heavy movie to plod through if they're not into it.

The Dead Zone (1983)
Format:  Borrowed
Genre:  Supernatural
Subgenre:  Precognition

I've never seen Christopher Walken in a more sympathetic role.  This is a strait forward, unapologetic Stephen King 80's movie.  I have never read the book, but the movie was solid.  A great cast, some great effects, and enough gore to make me cringe.  There were a lot of themes that freaked me out and made me cringe about this movie.  This is one that is good enough to purchase.  I'm kind of surprised that AMC doesn't run this movie around Halloween.

Wait Until Dark (1967)
Format:  VHS
Genre:  Serial Killer
Subgenre:  Women in Danger, Hitcockian

Like many of Hitchcock's Rope and Dial M for Murder, this movie takes place entirely inside the confine's of one room.  And like Hitchcock's best, the movie contaminates the viewer with fear and doubt without using too much (special effects, screaming cats, and other typical cheap scares).

I'm not much of an Audrey Hepburn fan (the only other movie of hers that I had seen was Charade - another Hitchcock-y movie), and I did not recognize her.  In my mind, that's a compliment, because I have read enough websites that review this as one of the scariest movies of all time, and I don't know that I would have watched it if I'd known Audrey Hepburn was in it.  Conversely, Ms. Hepburn's inclusion was one of the aspects that convinced my fiancee to watch with me.

Each of the five actors in the movie is used efficiently and poignantly.  I have no qualms about their performances.  There's an obnoxious child actor in the movie, but her obnoxiousness drives the plot, so it cannot be faulted.  Alan Arkin surprised the hell out of me.  I've never considered him much of an imposing figure before, but he was a sadistic bully bastard in this movie, and I loved every scene he was in.

Arkin going H.A.M.

I can't recommend this film enough.  I'm a Hitchcock enthusiast, and this fits in right with his best.  I jumped once during this movie.  My fiancee jumped at another point.  I fell asleep halfway through the movie, and Kelley watched throughout, so that's saying something.

In an effort to duplicate the suspense onscreen, movie theaters dimmed their lights to the legal limits, then turned them off one-by-one until each light on screen was shattered, resulting in the entire theater being plunged into complete darkness.

I also read this on Wikipedia, and because the movie revolves around Audrey Hepburn's blindness, I found it pertinent:

Tales from the Crypt:  Ritual (2001)
Format:  Netflix Streaming
Genre:  Voodoo
Subgenre:  Women in Danger

As if the trailer for Tales from the Crypt:  Ritual was no indication, this movie falls far short of the standard TftC fare.  This was the extent of the Cryptkeeper's participation in the movie.  There's no fun over-arching wrap with the old bag of bones.  Instead, some poseur Cryptkeeper showed up in this trailer, and that's that.

I should have known that the movie couldn't be too good based on this trailer.  It really wasn't worth the time it took to watch it.  The movie would have made a forgettable episode of the HBO series.  The best parts of the movie were very basic, but entertaining.  Erick Avari has a brutally gory scene at the beginning of the film, and Jennifer Grey (Dirty Dancing) looks delicious throughout the entire movie.  Kelley and I both observed that we felt sorry for her post-nose-job career.  She deserves better.  Tim Curry has a supporting role in the movie, but he's no Pennywise the Clown, and his role could have been withheld from the movie without anyone noticing.

More than anything, this movie just made me angry that Tales from the Crypt isn't on TV anymore.  This last gasp to make it relevant on the direct-to-video market is feeble and unwarranted.

The Orphanage (2007)
Format:  Blu-ray
Genre:  Ghosts

Holy freakin' crap!  I can't believe it took me this long to sit down and watch this movie.  I absolutely loved it from start to finish.  I can't recommend it to enough people.  I can't remember the last time I felt this strongly about a movie, and I can't believe I watched two horror movies within the course of one week that had such intimate endings (the other being Rammbock).

To summarize this quickly, imagine the best parts of Poltergeist, The Ring, and The Secret Garden (yes, a non-horror movie) being melded together to constitute a movie so scary that I had to turn it off one night, yet so touching that I welled up at the end.

I hope this movie never gets remade.  I simply cannot imagine anyone doing the film justice.  It is perfect.  The best movie I've seen yet over the course of this challenge, and that's saying a lot.

Halloween 3 (1982)
Format:  Borrowed
Genre:  Stupid
Subgenre:  I can't believe this got made it was so stupid

I hope this movie never gets remade.  I simply cannot imagine anyone making anything good out of this mess.  It's awful.  It is the worst movie I've seen over the course of this challenge, and that's saying a lot.

OK.  Maybe it's not as bad as Street Trash.

But it is close.  The best part of this movie was Tom Atkin's participation.  To make a long story short, this is They Live! but with androids instead of aliens and Tom Atkins instead of Rowdy Roddy Piper.

I hope nobody ever wastes their time on this one.  And because I have such a distaste for this, I don't mind including a boatload of spoilers.  I don't spoil movies often, but read this, and tell me I didn't just save you 90 minutes:

• Tom Atkins is a doctor who abandons his children to play detective because he witnessed a murder/suicide in his hospital and the victim's daughter is hot.
• An Irish warlock dollmaker creates an army of androids.  Instead of having androids take over the world, he imports one of the Stonehenge rocks from Ireland, and he puts his android army to work making Halloween masks with Stonehenge shavings glued to the back.
• Children all over the world throw tradition to the wind:  all of them buy the same three masks (a ghost, a witch, and a jack-o-lantern), and they all wear them all day on Halloween.  
• The Irish warlock plot is to promise to air a Halloween special on October 31, and all of the kids that own the masks will sit down in front of their TV to watch said special.  Mind you, to pull this off, every kid all over the world will be sitting simultaneously to watch this program.  And they will all be wearing their Halloween masks.
• When the children watch the program, the magical Stonehenge shavings will explode the kids' heads, and poisonous bugs and lizards will ooze from the dead children's heads, and they will bite and kill the children's parents.
• This will bring about a Halloween apocalypse in honor of the ancient god, Sauron.

Irish warlocks lose my respect with this one.  Shame on John Carpenter for signing off on what could have been a very cool idea for a Halloween franchise.  One that changed the theme every year but annually released something fun and scary.  Halloween 3 was neither fun nor scary.  Now I just have to come to terms with whether or not I hate it so much because if carries the Halloween name.  I don't know if I wouldn't hate it if it had been released under just the "Season of the Witch" title.

Magic (1978)

Format:  VHS

Genre:  Psychological Thriller

Subgenre:  Slasher, Puppets

I had never heard of this movie before I saw it on sale on Amazon.com.  I was really surprised by the quality of this film.  Magic could easily have been an un-scary Hammer Horror movie.  However, it was very well directed, scripted, and acted.  Bonus Points for Burgess Meredith being pretty cool and eventually badass in this movie.  Ann Margaret was sexy.  And Anthony Hopkins was, get this, creepy as sh!t.

I had no idea that Sir Hopkins was this good/psychotic pre-Hannibal Lecter.  It was really fun to see him fight for control between himself and his dummy.  See, that's the gist of this movie.  Hopkins' character Corky is an insecure magician who funnels his hate and rage and acerbic humor through his dummy, Fats.  Unfortunately, when Corky finds himself in confrontational situations, he diverts tough decisions to Fats with increasing frequency.  And Fats doesn't have the affection or hope that Corky has.  Fats is aware that he's a wooden puppet resigned to life in a box and without a companion.  

The premise here is really interesting, and it is executed extremely well.  Great scary movie.  Pre-Hannibal psychotic Hopkins is worth seeing.  Very cool.

Twenty-six movies to go.  This was a good week (the exception being Halloween 3 which I will never forgive).