50 Nights of Horror Challenge: Week Four - Slugs with Teeth!

50 NIGHTS OF HORROR WEEK FOUR

I'm beginning to see a trend here.  If you never noticed before, not all horror movies are created equal.  Some are really good.  Some are just God awfully terrible.  And some shouldn't really be considered horror at all.

Henry:  Portrait of a Serial Killer (1986)
Format:  Netflix Streaming
Genre:  Serial Killer


Initially, I didn't care for this movie.  I thought the pacing was slow, the acting flat, and the production value shoddy.  The more I thought about it, though, the more I like it.  The acting was flat because Michael Rooker plays a psychopath that cannot empathize with others.  His buddy, Otis, shares a similar affliction.  And the "love interest/sister" is an oblivious bimbo because...well...who could innocently associate with two psychopaths without being a tad oblivious?

Stuff does not end well for this trio.

Then I read that the movie was put together very quickly with very little funding.  I have a special place in my heart for low-budget movies, and this movie is one of the better low-budget movies I've seen.

The entirety of this movie comes together with a wild, bloody climax that I did not expect.  It really validated the movie for me.  Worth checking out.

2012 (2009)
Format:  Borrowed
Genre:  Disaster Movie
Subgenre:  MOAR DISASTER!

From the director of disaster classics like Independence Day (aliens destroy the planet), Godzilla (monster destroys the planet), and The Day After Tomorrow (global warming destroys the planet) comes 2012, a movie where planetary alignment destroys the planet!

All of the best parts of Roland Emmerich's movies are here.  Basically, that means lots of stuff gets destroyed by above-average special effects.  This isn't really a horror movie, though it has the highest body count of any movie I'll be watching during this challenge.  It could have really been played with more terror.  I imagine that it was made more family-friendly in order to sell more tickets.  It could really have been more dreadful, though.  I'd be interested in watching the much-grimmer version of this.  Oh well.  It is what it is.

SE7EN (1995)
Format:  Cinemax
Genre:  Serial Killer
Subgenre:  Mystery


This is really a gem of a movie.  Even if you're not a fan of horror movies, this is a solid, very well put together mystery movie.  Every time I watch this movie I find something new that I like about it.  I would put this up against any of David Fincher's films (The Game, Fight Club, Zodiac, etc.).  Everything about this movie contributes to the story in a very positive, subliminal way.  Like Fight Club, every little thing in the movie could be a clue.  If you haven't seen it, do so at your earliest convenience.  I don't want to spoil anything for anyone, but there are some fantastic cameos in the movie.  And there's one scene that will always -ALWAYS- make me jump.  One of the best endings to a movie I've ever seen.

Black Sunday (1970)
Format:  Borrowed
Genre:  Demons, Haunted House

My dad was only seven years old when this movie came out.  With that in mind, this movie, though not really terrifying by today's standards, had a lot going on.  It's pretty gruesome, and it has some really neat horror effects.  I can't believe it is a movie that is 50+ years old.  Its worth watching for no other reason than watching a movie that impacted the direction horror movies would be made for years to come.

The story is pretty neat.  A vampire/witch is burned at the stake, condemned to die by her own brother.  She places a curse on the family and community, and several hundred years later some yokels inadvertently release the curse.  What results was probably really scary to watch back in the day.  If you watch this, I recommend watching it in a very dark room with one candle lit during a thunderstorm.  Should set the mood nicely.

The Prophecy (1995)
Format:  Borrowed
Genre:  Supernatural
Subgenre:  Angels/Satan

I had never seen this movie before, but I've seen posters and copies of it for years.  The movie's star is Christopher Walken before he was More Cowbell Christopher Walken.  He's not the hero of the movie by any means.  And although he's the villain (the angel Gabriel), he's a sympathetic villain.

The story is as such:  God loves human beings more than any of his other creations.  The angels of heaven began fighting a civil war because of this.  Some of them are jealous of humans.  Others want to preserve God's chosen people.  So the armies of heaven are warring with each other.  God is just sitting back and not participating.  Meanwhile, on earth, the soul of one mean, demented bastard is ripe for the picking.  This evil person has just died, and for some reason his soul can be used as a weapon in heaven, and whichever angel claims the soul can use it to end the angel war.

As the angels jockey for the soul, some humans get tangled up in the mess.  Elias Koteas (Casey Jones from the TMNT movies) and Virginia Madsen (Candyman) play the two most prominent humans.  Elias Koteas is always fun to see in a movie, and here he plays a man who was on the bring of becoming an ordained priest, but he loses his faith and becomes a detective instead.  Virginia Madsen is a smoking hot teacher whose student gets wrapped up in the angel war, so she does, too.  Virginia Madsen looks like Angelina Jolie in this movie.  It makes me kind of sad that she didn't go on to do better movies.

It took me a while to warm up to this movie.  The theme of this movie is very similar to Spawn (the movie or the comic book), The Demon (comic book), Constantine (the movie or the comic book), etc.  And when I put that all together, I realized that this probably influenced those movies/comics significantly.  I haven't seen the sequels yet, but I plan to.  We'll see what direction this story takes.  It could be very very interesting by the time everything is said and done.

Ultimately, though, this isn't so much a horror movie as it is an action movie with horror elements.  There was some gore, but not enough to really make anyone jump.

Slugs (1988)
Format:  Netflix Streaming
Genre:  Monster movie


Wow.  This movie really came as a surprise to me.  I did not expect to enjoy this movie at all.  I turned it on randomly to play in the background while I was doing some work.  Thirty minutes into the movie I stopped watching it on my iPad so I could go watch it on my TV via the PS3.  It was too good to relegate to a small screen.

Basically, this is a goofy monster movie with loads (probably way too much) 80's gore and special effects.  I'm bummed that the trailer gave away as many of the gruesome scenes as it did, but the movie is still loaded with enough that anyone watching this movie will be pleasantly surprised.

To make a long story short:  toxic waste has mutated a bunch of slugs, making them faster than normal slugs, and way hungrier for meat.  When I saw the closeup of a slug with teeth about to bite a finger, I knew I was in for something good.

Toothy slug.  So awesome.  Also...terrible fake finger.

Like any good monster movie, the characters play second fiddle to their death scenes.  In an odd twist, several characters have a lot of exposition (this is my wife, these are my kids, this is my best friends, etc.), but after they die, none of the development matters at all.  I just found it odd that the writer decided we needed to be introduced to a man's wife and her alcoholism if her reaction isn't shown when she finds out he's been eaten alive from the inside out.  Just an odd thought.

My fiancee joined me halfway through the movie because I kept chuckling and gasping.  She lost her appetite several times during the movie.  I recommend watching this after dinner, because there were some scenes that made me nauseous, too.  

There was one actor that looked like 1980's, Spanish Jon Hamm (Mad Men).  There was a scene involving lettuce that made me gag.  There's a slug with teeth.  This movie has been the most pleasant surprise that I've turned up yet.  Right now I'm declaring this as the challenge's winner.  It overtook The Prowler, and that's saying something.  We'll see if it keeps its position on the throne as I go through the next couple weeks of movies.

Hide and Seek (2005)

Format:  DVD

Genre:  Haunted House

Kelley and I caught a random trailer before a movie last week, and we decided that we would check it out.  Hide and Seek arrived the other day, so we decided to sit down and watch this as our couple's horror movie for the week.

Robert Deniro is Dakota Fanning's recently-widowed father.  Dakota Fanning begins acting suspiciously, and Robert Deniro is trying to determine if she's acting out after her mother's death in the form of an imaginary friend named Charlie.  Or is she really being visited by someone/something named Charlie?  And whether Charlie is real or imaginary, how does he know so much about Robert Deniro's family?  And why is Charlie popping up in Dakota Fanning's drawings?

I am a sucker for kid's drawings being a scary plot device in movies.

The only fault I can find with this movie is that it came out during a run of spooky films that all seemed to be derivative of The 6th Sense.  Dragonfly, What Lies Beneath, etc.  It's creepy enough to scare people, but not so bad that it earns an R-rating.  This movie might have been rated R.  I'm not sure.  It certainly didn't need to be rated R.

Elizabeth Shue and Fanke Jannsen are both in this movie.  Both super hot.  Dylan Baker plays a creepy sheriff. There's more than enough creepiness in this movie.  It absolutely kept my attention as I tried to figure out what the hell was going on.  This really works as a thriller.  It was creepy.  I figured out the ending with about 40 minutes to go, but that's ok, because the ending was really fun to watch.  Also, I've become a sucker for these movies that take place in New York because now I can identify landmarks.  The bulk of this movie takes place in the Hudson Valley, another part of NY State that I adore.

There's not much new ground uncovered in this movie. Kelley told me a couple times that I've watched too many horror movies.  I was able to figure most of the scenes and surprises out before they actually happened on screen.  That's not necessarily a bad thing.  It makes it an accessible horror movie that anyone can watch with anyone else.  Not too frightening.  Not too scary.  Moody and creepy as heck, but not dreadfully so.  I can't say that I'll ever watch this again, but I am glad to be able to say I've seen it.

I only have nineteen more movies to go before I hit my 50 mark.  This shouldn't be a problem.  I have about fifty more that people have recommended to me, and I have about 50 waiting as reserves in the wings.  I've added a lot of VHS horror to my collection via Amazon.com.  I had no idea they still sold VHS on that site, and I've found several gems for less than $1 (plus $2.98 shipping).  Who knows?  Maybe by the time Halloween rolls around I will have seen 75 or maybe even 100 movies.  That would be quite the feat.  I don't know if Kelley will tolerate that kind of garbage, though.  We'll see.