October 2019 Horror Movie a Day

[Compound]

Well, since SJP hasn't been seen in a while, I'll toss this up:

The goal: 31 days, 31(-ish) movies (the -ish will be explained)

1. Horror is broadly defined; a thriller with a serial killer or stalker is just as viable as a horror comedy or the latest Cronenberg body-horror fest.  However, anything that has a single scary moment, or is 'so bad, it's horrifying' does not count.  I remit, as usually do, that Chairman of the Board is not a candidate, no matter how terrifying it is to sit through.

2. If you miss a day, you can make it up.  However, you cannot 'front-load' by watching three movies and then intentionally taking three days off (though that's more the 'honor system' than anything).

3. The watching begins at midnight, October 1st and ends 11:59 PM, October 31st, on your local time.

4. As this is the Rifftrax forum, riffed films are not only acceptable, but encouraged!

5. Each movie in a franchise is considered a separate entry, so feel free to watch nothing but Jason, Freddy, and Myers if you want.

6.  TV specials count, so Peanuts Halloween is perfectly acceptable. It used to be an "at least an hour" rule, but eh, this is for fun, so what the heck.

For past threads:

And last year's thread
The activity from 2017
2016's Activities
2015
Or look at the 2014 thread.
Or the 2013 thread.
Here's the 2012 thread.
And here's the 2011 one.
And 2010.

Let's see if we can get this thing rolling again.

[Compound]

And for those looking for a bit of help in this, all through October Shout factory is running a horror double feature starting at 6 PM Central. (Other time zones, look it up. ) One horror film followed by a horror themed episode of MST3k. Available at Shout's website, on Roku, Fire, Twitch, Pluto and several other places that I've never heard of.

[Edward J Grug III]

Thank you for starting this a day early for those in a different time zone!

I probably won't manage one a day, but I might make an attempt this year!

[SJP]

Thanks for starting it! I was going to come on yesterday to post (yes, it has been awhile since I've been on, but trying to find time again!), but missed. Yep, going to try and do it again this year, though as has been the case lately, just been incredibly busy with a lot going on, but I've already got my first on ready and will be watching today!

EDIT: And I made it! It was incredibly close (I was about five movies behind going into the last week, but I caught up). Will review them all later.

1. Screamers (1981, Kind of)
2. Trick or Treats (1982)
3. Killing Spree (1987)
4. Uninvited (Rifftrax Version) (1988/2017)
5. Grotesque (1988? Seriously?)
6. Final Exam (1981)
7. Killbots (aka Chopping Mall) (1986)
8. Giant from the Unknown (1958)
9. They Came from Beyond Space (1967)
10. I Was a Teenage Zombie (1987)
11. The Dead Hate the Living (2000)
12. ShadowZone
13. GhostKeeper
14. Rifftrax (Mutant)
15. Curtains
16. Dr. Moreau's House of Pain
17. Parasite
18. The Evil
19. Transylvania 6-5000
20. Frightmare
21. Bob's Burgers Season 10 Halloween
22. Rifftrax: Hillbillies in a Haunted House
23. Simpsons 30th Halloween
24. Lord of Illusions
25. Waxwork
26. It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown
27. Class of Nuke'Em High
28. Woman in Black
29. Curious George: A Halloween Boo Fest
30. Witch's Day Out
31. Ghostbusters

[Compound]

My overall list:

1) Overlord (2018) (Zombies)*
2) Tales of Halloween (2015) (Anthology)*
3) Space Amoeba (1970) (Space Monsters)* 
4) Rifftrax: Ice Cream Man (2018) (Clint Howard)*
5) Return to Horror Hotel (2019) (Anthology)*
6) The Meg (2018) (Shark)*
7) Would You Rather? (2013) (Other people)*
8 ) Game of Assassins (2013) (Hell)*
9) Willard (1971) (Rats)*
10) Spawn of Slithius (1971) (Mud monster)
11) Chopping Mall (1986) (Robots)
12) Boggy Creek 2: And the Legend Continues (1984) (Bigfoot)
13) Demon of Paradise (1987) (LIzardman)*
14) War of the Colossal Beast (1958) (Giants!)
15) Rifftrax: Blood Theater (2019)*
16) The Dead Can Die (2019) (Zombies)
17) Slumber Party Massacre II (1987) (Psycho)*
18) Terror Beneath the Sea (1966) (Sea Men)*
19) Merlin's Shop of Mystical Wonders (1996) (Rock and Roll Martians)
20) Fido (2006) (Zombies)*
21) Cinematic Titanic: Wasp Woman (2008)*
22) The House that Dripped Blood (1971) (Anthology)
23) MST3k: Devil Fish  (1998)
24) The Undead (1957) (The Devil)
25) Time Walker (1982) (Space Mummies and mold) *
26) MST3k: The Giant Spider Invasion (1998)

[Compound]

And reviews!

Overlord
On D-Day, a group of American paratroopers discover that the Nazis are up to something underneath a sleepy French village...

Okay, I have a few issues here. One, um, guys? The Army wasn't integrated back then. It's kinda a fairly big thing. There were literally about a dozen black paratroops at the time, and they were all stateside. Yeah, yeah. Soldiers are fighting zombies and I'm griping that the army is integrated 4 years early. There are other issues too. The airdrop seems to be happening during the day. (Not what happened. Night drops. The Germans weren't shooting down planes, although they did shoot a number of troops in the sky. )  A French kid has a baseball.  Not quite sure how he got that in wartime France. 2/3 of the Americans are British. Yes, Fitz. You're not fooling anyone. And there's a rap song over the credits. Because of course there is.

Ugh, anyway, after a disastrous drop, a handful of American soldiers sent to destroy a radio tower for reasons discover that the Nazis are trying to create "1,000 year Soldiers to protect the 1,000 year Reich." Yeah, you kinda see where this is heading. It takes a while to set up, and they're pretty light on the actual Nazi super soldiers, but overall it's fairly watchable, unless you were in the room with me wincing at the loose connection to history.

[SJP]

Screamers (1981, but really 1979 & 1980)

People are terrorized by men turned inside out...or it's a movie about fish people getting treasure from Atlantis.  Yes, definitely the latter.

Well, to be fair, the story behind Screamers is more interesting than the movie (which is fun in its own way).  See, in 1979, the movie Island of the Fishmen was released in Italy.  This 95 minute movie was given over to Roger Corman to distribute in the U.S.  Corman being Corman, he thought the movie was too slow, lacking in gore, and needed some help being successful. So, he cut out about half an hour for pacing, recorded twelve new minutes of footage (including our favorite Space Santa, Cameron Mitchell) as a prologue as well as some different "transitional fishman" footage towards the end, and called it Something Waits in the Dark.

It didn't do well. So, about a year later, Corman retitled the movie Screamers, created a poster about people being turned inside out, and had a protege of his film a trailer with footage that never appears in the film to get people interested.

In other words, Screamers' poster, trailer, and premise are a complete lie about the actual movie, to the point that for the theatrical run, Corman spliced in the fake trailer footage clumsily to all the theatrical prints just so people wouldn't demand their money back.

Sad thing is, the Screamers movie as shown in the trailer (it's on YouTube) probably would have been a lot of fun, but the movie we have is just a cropped down, slightly gorier version of a movie that is fairly watchable.  Sure, the Fishmen are clearly rubber suits, but the movie itself is just fine, as long as you enjoy 70s Italian B-Movies.

[Darth Geek]

Screamers (1981, but really 1979 & 1980)

People are terrorized by men turned inside out...or it's a movie about fish people getting treasure from Atlantis.  Yes, definitely the latter.

Well, to be fair, the story behind Screamers is more interesting than the movie (which is fun in its own way).  See, in 1979, the movie Island of the Fishmen was released in Italy.  This 95 minute movie was given over to Roger Corman to distribute in the U.S.  Corman being Corman, he thought the movie was too slow, lacking in gore, and needed some help being successful. So, he cut out about half an hour for pacing, recorded twelve new minutes of footage (including our favorite Space Santa, Cameron Mitchell) as a prologue as well as some different "transitional fishman" footage towards the end, and called it Something Waits in the Dark.

It didn't do well. So, about a year later, Corman retitled the movie Screamers, created a poster about people being turned inside out, and had a protege of his film a trailer with footage that never appears in the film to get people interested.

In other words, Screamers' poster, trailer, and premise are a complete lie about the actual movie, to the point that for the theatrical run, Corman spliced in the fake trailer footage clumsily to all the theatrical prints just so people wouldn't demand their money back.

Sad thing is, the Screamers movie as shown in the trailer (it's on YouTube) probably would have been a lot of fun, but the movie we have is just a cropped down, slightly gorier version of a movie that is fairly watchable.  Sure, the Fishmen are clearly rubber suits, but the movie itself is just fine, as long as you enjoy 70s Italian B-Movies.

Another example of Corman being bad at his job. If he worked for someone else, he would have been fired a long time ago.

[Compound]

Tales of Halloween (2015)

Recent horror anthology from Joe Dante.

Number of interesting cameos in this. John Landis, Dante himself, Dana Gould. Anyway, unlike most horror anthologies, this one is lean. Less than 90 minutes long, but about ten different stories in it. Setup. Resolution. Boom. Mixed quality on the stories. Some really work. Some fall flat. A couple just fizzle. Example- there's a segment with Dana Gould as a home owner who puts up a scary display on his lawn every year. This year however, his heavy metal neighbor puts up a more hardcore AND METAL! display with more blood, gore AND METAL! in it. With that setup, you'd expect, I dunno, the metal neighbor to discover that some of Gould's props come from former neighbors and he and his buddies incorporated into the display or something. Or a third party makes an even grander display or deals with them both. What happens in the film? Fist fight followed by both accidentally dying.  Anyway, since each segment is about 7 minutes long, none really overstay their welcome. And some of the segments are pretty good.  So, it's okay. Might be worth the 81 minutes of your time.

[SJP]

Trick or Treats (1982)

Not to be confused for either the Trick or Treat movie with Ozzy Osborne nor the more recent anthology movie, this is the story of a babysitter stuck at a house with a little bastard kid who torments her constantly, all while his insane father escapes from the loony bin to exact revenge on the family.

The movie is played almost entirely for laughs, though your mileage may vary as the jokes are generally of the "wow, that was so bad it was actually kind of funny" variety.  But, what's more interesting is the people in it.  Steve Railsback appears as the boyfriend of the babysitter (who is playing Othello...that's what I meant about the bad humor), the bad guy is the guy who plays Johnny Cage's mentor at the beginning of the 1995 Mortal Kombat movie (but who looks a lot like Meatloaf here), the main guy from Eating Raoul has a bit part as a bum, and David Carradine shows up for about five minutes.  The main problem with the movie is that it is glacially paced.  It's funny that two characters have an argument about movie editing, because this really needed a little bit of trimming.  Still, it's surprisingly fun, especially considering it was made on a $50,000 budget.

[Edward J Grug III]

I've been trying to post here for a couple of days, but it's been too busy at work to write anything much, so extremely briefly:

1 Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1978) (First viewing) - Man, the special effects have really held up in this film.
2 Night Tide (1961) (First viewing) - Started pretty great. We took a break to get a snack and I looked up the director to find he directed Rifftrax's own, RUDY. The last 20 minutes of the movie is when you can see Curtis Harrington's 'style' shine through, and the movie falls apart completely. A shame, because it was mostly enjoyable.
3 Don't Look Now (1973) - So great, and looks stunning on our new TV

[Russoguru]

A quiet place was really good. I have been saying this for years and apparently I'm full of shit or something, but I still firmly believe it's possible to make good horror with a PG-13 rating. Scary stories to tell in the dark? PG-13, Happy death day? PG-13. Happy Death day 2U? PG-13. And I just have to tell this story... the first time I saw Alien was on TV where it was heavily edited. I would dare say the emotional impact was just as effective, even without the scenes containing blood and gore.

I have heard a sequel to A Quiet Place is on the horizon and honestly? Considering the ending of that movie? Just call me dubious as to whether its premise will work... if you've seen it you probably see where I am coming from...

[Edward J Grug III]

4 The Mummy's Tomb (1942) (first viewing) - We've been working through the Universal Monsters Legacy sets, and this is the first one we've watched that we thought was a dud. It's only 61 minutes long, but has 12 minutes of flashback reusing footage from The Mummy's Hand. Even at only 61 minutes we found this one to be quite a slog.

[losingmydignity]

I've been trying to post here for a couple of days, but it's been too busy at work to write anything much, so extremely briefly:

1 Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1978) (First viewing) - Man, the special effects have really held up in this film.
2 Night Tide (1961) (First viewing) - Started pretty great. We took a break to get a snack and I looked up the director to find he directed Rifftrax's own, RUDY. The last 20 minutes of the movie is when you can see Curtis Harrington's 'style' shine through, and the movie falls apart completely. A shame, because it was mostly enjoyable.
3 Don't Look Now (1973) - So great, and looks stunning on our new TV

I love all three of these movies!

Something does go wrong at the end of Night Tide, doesn't it? Can't remember now what, but I love how lonely and desperate the Dennis Hopper character is. I remember the best scene being a tarot reading scene if I'm not mistaken.

[Compound]

Ugh. Apparently while I was typing my login timed out so out goes all the text I typed. Short versions-

Space Amoeba
Boring. Not one of Toho's  better films.

Rifftrax Ice Cream Man
I've seen a killer ice cream truck driver film at some point and it wasn't this one, somehow. I even recalled that one having Clint Howard too. Bland horror. Not inventive or creepy enough to be memorable. Kept expecting a twist somewhere but nope.  Biggest horror in the film- ice cream storage conditions. Good riffing though. Also, not quite sure why 50s mobsters were using an SMG that really didn't enter wide use until the mid 50s in the UK let alone the US. Yes, I noticed. It was the same gun that they used for blaster rifles in Star Wars. My eyes were drawn to it.