October Horror Thread

Re-posting to this thread - deleted this post from the 31 days thread (sorry about that!)....

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THE STRANGE CASE OF DR JEKYLL AND MISS OSBOURNE (1981) - sort of a rewatch......but......(see below) ........7++/10


I had seen this in a lousy print, many years ago and wrote it off.......the DVD, from Arrow video, is nothing short of a revelation. The first time I've seen it not dubbed ......with scenes crisp and detailed and without missing scenes.

This is something of a classic - an Art-horror that flirts with erotica (or, um, porn) as much as any I can think of....not for all tastes (at all), but for horror fans, something of a must watch in this print - which has a ton of extras.

Rapturously beautiful and the musical score is....... completely astonishing too. This is one of the best DVD restorations I think I've ever seen (?) - a near total salvage job.

Stagefright (1987) - ~ 6.5/10 re-watch on TUBI

Michael Soavi's feature debut is a mostly fun giallo let down by a light-ish ending when everything about it feels increasingly darker......at about the halfway point murders start happening furiously and kinda awesomely and the feather-y finale is quite striking but ......the very end makes it too easy to just say "Let's go get a burger" instead of "That was Fncked up!" .....and this time you want the latter.

Who? Who? What are you, an owl?

If this month has taught me anything, if I'm ever in a horror film situation and I see a little girl who's "stranded"... I'm cunt punting the bitch and running my ass out of dodge. I'm not falling for your tricks, you creepy little thing!

Madhouse (1974) rewatch - Such a great idea for Vincent Price and Peter Cushing but a pretty botched movie in how it's made.... No surprise it's the only project from the editor and the screenwriters (the characters talk in taglines), but we expect better from Jim Clark who's an excellent editor himself (The Innocents) and had just directed before this the marvelously goofy Every Home Should Have One. Still, Price's perf and Cushing in his fewer moments make it worthwhile.

The Monster Club (1981) - Vincent Price is having a ball here and this is like a funky goblin concert film (the songs start great and get slightly worse with each one) with three pretty good, droll horror segments within it about mixed-race monsters. Quite underrated..... and worth it entirely to see Price's faces during his dance scene:


The Ballad of Tam Lin aka The Devil's Widow (1970) - shoutout @tyler - "You get older every year, I get older every sordid second." Based on folk poems by the guy who wrote Auld Lang Syne, this movie asks should old acquaintance be forgot? and what if she was an obsessively young-consorting witch with lewks? Ava Gardner gives a beguiling perf and gets many great close-ups (I'm picturing Blanchett in the remake); Ian McShane is her obsessee. Not necessarily very good as it feels prolonged and unfun, there isn't an itch of horror until the last fifteen minutes. It's the only thing Roddy McDowell ever directed and there is a visual beauty to it and some standout moments like the terrifically freaky slo-mo woods run from McShane at the end.

Nosferatu the Vampyre (1979, Werner Herzog)

(on Criterion Channel)

My first time watching the Herzog classic. Sort of slow-going for me but the beautiful cinematography and deep atmosphere do wonders for it. Not particularly scary but the Murnau-esque shadowy shots were creepy as hell and the imagery of a plagued, decimated Europe is haunting in its own right. Kinski, Ganz, and especially Adjani are all great in this. 

this one is bonkers in a lot of good ways even if the story didn't quite stick the landing for me. Love the sets/makeup/music/cinematography. And I mentioned already in the poster thread but it also has legitimately one of the coolest posters I've ever seen!

Hush Hush Sweet Charlotte (1964) 7.5/10. Southern women can't handle Bruce Dern who drives them to lust, murder, and lifetimes of madness! Bette Davis' charcuterie of hysterics and vicarious guilt, and the way she's sabotaged, makes this sort of her All About Evil, or rather the bigger-budget twin to Joan's Strait Jacket that was released earlier in the year (George Kennedy plays an unwanted laborer in each!). It's amazing how this intentionally or not plays off earlier Bettes - Jezebel, The Letter, The Little Foxes, In This Our Life, etc. It's also, besides being tied to Baby Jane, indebted to the Gothic genre (especially Biroc's creatively forceful visuals, deep focus, strikes of lights and shadows) and probably Hitchcock (Under Capricorn came to mind). It's certainly overwritten but very fun...and loud.

Do You Like Hitchcock? (2005) - 6.5-7.0/10 - Re-watch

Fun, witty, cheap looking Dario Argento TV pic - easily watchable (even re-watchable) and that is the last pretty good thing he did since his last great film (The Stendahl Syndrome (1996))......this one is not a great movie but I really like how lovingly created this is .........and I'd like it even more if everybody else didn't tell me how much they disliked it.

Plenty of sly "catch the references" to Hitchcock (especially Rear Window), from one master to another....

Killer Klowns from Outer Space ( 1988 )

Huge fan of clowns and finally give this a go. Very much of its time but deserves its cult status ( there's a wonderful Arrow edition with a vast set of extras to dive into the production, took me almost all day to see everything ), storywise there's nothing of highlight, screenplay is very basic and the acting... I saw the camp thread and while is not delicious camp acting, what the actors do is part of the charm of the whole thing, but what really amaze me is the creativity and artistry on display and how great it looks when cleary was made with 3 cents. From the space ship, the weapons of choice, chase sequences, reminded me a bit of those 50s sci-fi / horror films, and that adds a surreal dimension and considering the clowns and comedic tone, the result is quite special, there's a couple of sequences where the deaths are pretty creepy/gross that left me with a weird feeling but very effective. 

If we ever do the 1988 AMARA, I'll be campaigning hard for the original song, it was catchy as hell.

Children of the Corn (1984)

Thought this was pretty lame - bad acting, laughably awful special effects, and just kind of dull overall. The only part I found somewhat effective was when the couple was exploring the unfamiliar town early on - its eerie, decrepit emptiness made for good atmosphere.

Funnily enough, I decided to finally check this out after rewatching the Hey Arnold! episode where Arnold visits his weird cousin Arnie in a strange, rural town, which I remember reading was sort of inspired by Children of the Corn in its setting and creepiness. Part of what disappointed me about the film was how quickly we're shown evil and horrific events explicitly right at the start of the film; I would have preferred it if we actually started from the POV of the ignorant couple, and things get progressively weirder and weirder; and instead of cutting back and forth between the children and the main characters, we stay with the couple and learn more along with them. It's honestly what I was sort of imagining the movie to be before watching it, similar to the progressive tonal trajectory of the Hey Arnold! episode (though that plays out more like a Twilight Zone episode that has nothing much to do with the actual plot of Children of the Corn).

I guess what I was wanting the movie to be was something more like the plot of The Wicker Man, only with children - something more mysterious initially that gradually reveals itself as it goes along. I even read the plot synopses of all the sequels to see if there was anything that resembled what I was looking for, but no luck. Now I really just want to write my own version of Children of the Corn...

Very unfunny stoner zombie comedy.

LAST TWO! Theater of Blood and Night of the Living Dead, both fantastic

Theater of Blood is my kind of horror comedy. Dry, clever British meta-humor with Vincent Price hamming it up deliciously. The concept is hilarious to me; a vengeful retired Shakespearian actor targeting the critics responsible for not giving him a critics' circle award. You read that right, a critics' circle award. Diana Rigg is fun too, in her goofy boy drag that fools nobody. The kills are devilish fun! Highlights are the Merchant of Venice pound of flesh. "Living theater, yes, but isn't this going a bit too far?"

Night of the Living Dead, iconic proto-zombie classic. First time viewing. Relentlessly pessimistic, surprisingly political. Hugely atmospheric with the rural setting and sharp lighting contrasts. The gritty low-budget look and the gore effects hold up excellently because Romero knew what he was doing and maximized the hell out of his resources. The scene with the little girl in the basement is one of the best sequences I've seen all month.