October Horror Movie a Day 2012

[SJP]

Two in one day!  First time this month, even though it only counts towards the 50, not the 31.

Haunted Honeymoon

I think most of the criticisms of this are based around it being a Mel Brooks film without Mel Brooks.  It certainly feels like one, with Dom Deluise and Gene Wilder running around saying silly things, as well as Gilda Radner's part almost reading like it would've been perfect for Madeline Kahn (and the butler for the by-then deceased Marty Feldman).  Still, while it may not be a great film, it still has a wonderful charm to it, and some memorable moments (if you've seen it, the dancing feet and the monster walking on the wall should come to mind).  Shame Netflix only has a cheap fullscreen copy and not the original theatrical.

The Catman of Paris/Rifftrax Live's House on Haunted Hill

Catman of Paris is a 40s film, taking place in France (natch) and starring a lot of people who couldn't do a French accent to save their lives.  The story follows a recent series of murders, all having to do with people being mauled by what a doctor helping the police believes is a half-man/half-cat creature, while the police are dubious at best.  Suspicion falls upon a recently returned writer, who has written an extremely salacious political novel and, surprise surprise, it's his enemies and acquaintances that are turning up dead.  Add in that he has sudden amnesia and you've got a recipe for disaster.  There is some okay makeup effects (they look good, but not particularly monstrous), and the movie speeds along with its short running time, and it's pretty much the same recipe of this sort of film, but it's not too bad, either.

As for Haunted Hill...well, if you haven't seen it, might I recommend a nice "sid-i-tif?"

[JimJ]

Movie #25: Dark House (2009)

Low budget and pretty terrible.  It's made semi-watchable by good performances from Jeffery Combs and Diane Salinger, but they can't save it from the shitty effects and terrible dialogue.  I actually liked the concept but the execution was very bad.  1.5/5

Movie #26: Hunger (2009)

Like Dark House, this is another of the "Fangoria Fright Fest" movies recently added to Netflix.  I liked this one much better.  Much better acting overall and no horrible cheap CGI.  The premise fits the small budget, as it's just a group of people looked in a room with no food for over a month by some guy.  It's not great, but it's better than I expected.  2.5/5

[SJP]

Snow Beast

Now, THIS is the SyFy fare I was looking for.  Stupid concept, bad editing (watch for the Future War-esque scene where the victim's hands are when she's being strangled by the monster), and completely gratuitous victims combine into a strangely watchable concoction.  Oh, don't get me wrong, it's bad (and goes completely bananas in its final few minutes with the facepalm moments), but it's a lot more fun than Hybrid could ever hope to be.

Bo Duke (the guy who played him, not a canon sequel to Dukes of Hazzard, though that would've been awesome) and his daughter take a trip up to the mountains on a work-related jaunt, where he and two of his friends go in search for why the lynx population appears to have gone missing.  Reason?  Killer Sasquatch.  The rest of the movie consists of death by Sasquatch (usually someone unimportant to the plot), talking, then more death by Sasquatch.  It's exactly as dumb as it sounds, but yet takes itself seriously enough to not feel like an Asylum production, which actually goes in its favor.  Also, they LOVED their rubber monster suit and show it as much as possible, especially in bright daylight, where it clearly looks like a silly costume.  But at least it's a guy in a suit.

Good for a laugh, and fodder for a nice iRiff or two, but not much else to recommend it.  Shame the annoying daughter doesn't even get a scratch on her, especially when she sort of throws a few people to the wolves, metaphorically speaking.

Oh, and watching Warlock the other day gave me the idea for a new challenge that should be pretty doable:
THE GARY OLDMAN SCHOOL OF ACTING AWARD: Watch an (in)famous horror actor/actress play both the murderous villain AND one of the heroes or nameless rabble of victims.  Can potentially occur in the same movie.

This idea came to me when I realized Julian Sands plays a nasty, over the top warlock in one film series, but then played an eccentric scientist in Arachnophobia (who may not have been necessarily GOOD, but was certainly not on the side of the spiders), and realized he's nowhere near the only one to do this.  As for why it's the Gary Oldman award?  Gary Oldman once claimed on David Letterman that he played heroes and villains equally.  At the time (the mid-90s), this was a complete and utter lie that anyone who's seen his work could call in a second.  Nowadays it's a bit different, but I wanted to honor Gary and his reputation of 'playing both sides' when we all know most of the time movie villains tend not to play movie heroes.

[ScottotD]

Gary Oldman once claimed on David Letterman that he played heroes and villains equally.  At the time (the mid-90s), this was a complete and utter lie that anyone who's seen his work could call in a second. 

I guess it depends if you look at his career overall, much like Alan Rickman he's played villians in his more high profile/big budget stuff but not in the rest of his work (although I guess indie movies don't really have villians)

[Darth Geek]

Snow Beast

Now, THIS is the SyFy fare I was looking for.  Stupid concept, bad editing (watch for the Future War-esque scene where the victim's hands are when she's being strangled by the monster), and completely gratuitous victims combine into a strangely watchable concoction.  Oh, don't get me wrong, it's bad (and goes completely bananas in its final few minutes with the facepalm moments), but it's a lot more fun than Hybrid could ever hope to be.

Bo Duke (the guy who played him, not a canon sequel to Dukes of Hazzard, though that would've been awesome) and his daughter take a trip up to the mountains on a work-related jaunt, where he and two of his friends go in search for why the lynx population appears to have gone missing.  Reason?  Killer Sasquatch.  The rest of the movie consists of death by Sasquatch (usually someone unimportant to the plot), talking, then more death by Sasquatch.  It's exactly as dumb as it sounds, but yet takes itself seriously enough to not feel like an Asylum production, which actually goes in its favor.  Also, they LOVED their rubber monster suit and show it as much as possible, especially in bright daylight, where it clearly looks like a silly costume.  But at least it's a guy in a suit.

Good for a laugh, and fodder for a nice iRiff or two, but not much else to recommend it.  Shame the annoying daughter doesn't even get a scratch on her, especially when she sort of throws a few people to the wolves, metaphorically speaking.

Oh, and watching Warlock the other day gave me the idea for a new challenge that should be pretty doable:
THE GARY OLDMAN SCHOOL OF ACTING AWARD: Watch an (in)famous horror actor/actress play both the murderous villain AND one of the heroes or nameless rabble of victims.  Can potentially occur in the same movie.

This idea came to me when I realized Julian Sands plays a nasty, over the top warlock in one film series, but then played an eccentric scientist in Arachnophobia (who may not have been necessarily GOOD, but was certainly not on the side of the spiders), and realized he's nowhere near the only one to do this.  As for why it's the Gary Oldman award?  Gary Oldman once claimed on David Letterman that he played heroes and villains equally.  At the time (the mid-90s), this was a complete and utter lie that anyone who's seen his work could call in a second.  Nowadays it's a bit different, but I wanted to honor Gary and his reputation of 'playing both sides' when we all know most of the time movie villains tend not to play movie heroes.

Try watching The Snow Creature riffed by Turkey Shoot. Very funny riff, and much drinking, rock climbing and Sasquatch goofyness abounds.

[JimJ]

Movie #27: Paranormal Activity 2 (2010) 3.5/5

Movie #28: Paranormal Activity 3 (2011) 3/5

Movie #29: Paranormal Activity 4 (2012)

Eh, it was OK.  The premise is starting to wear itself thin (actually it started that in the 3rd one), so I kind of hope this is the last one, though I doubt it will be.  I'm glad we finally got an actual sequel and it was decent.  The most likable characters of the series by far, and some decently creepy moments.   Unlike last year, which was one of the worst theater crowds I've ever dealt with, this one was pretty great.  Only moderately full and pretty well behaved. 3/5

Movie #30: The Human Centipede 2 (2011)

This makes the first movie look like a masterpiece.  My main complaint, if you can call it that, about the first one, was that it was hyped as a shocking gross out movie and it was pretty tame compared to other movie like it.  This one goes WAY too far in the other direction, to the point of being laughably absurd. 1/5

[Compound]

Okay, I just saw Tom "Spongebob" Kenny get eaten by a purse. 

I guess I can cross that off my bucket list.

[JimJ]

Movie #31: Kidnapped (2010)

Very intense Spanish film about a home invasion.  The title is a bit of a misnomer, as the only person truly kidnapped is the father, who one of the guys takes around to ATMs to get cash out.  Very brutal violence and a really crazy climax.  The daughter's constant screaming and crying got a bit annoying, especially at the end, but other than that the performances were great and I really enjoyed it.  4/5

[Compound]

Malibu Beach Vampires 1991

Sometime when you see something advertised, it's nothing like what you expect. That's the case here. When I popped the disc in the player, there was a familiar song playing over the menu. A few seconds after I hit "play", the source came to me. "Was that Beach Blanket Bingo?"

It was.

And that wasn't a good sign. See, if the film actually was a Beach Party film, but with vampires, that might work. But this film is a confused mess of 20 year old political messages with thinly disguised versions of Gary Hart, The Bakkers (Jim and Tammy) and Ollie North.  The vampire interacts with a character on the beach and is barely seen again. The rest of the film deals with a trio of girls who are in the "Fakker's" home and all have personal issues. The "vampires" (who have some of the worst dental prosthetics that I've ever seen. Seriously, wax vampire teeth fit better than these do) are from the underworld and they bite their victims with a "truth serum" which forces them to tell the truth or die.

Because acting like sodium pentathol is a traditional vampire power.

Anyway, there's a long, long, long series of scenes popping from the girls to Bakker, to Hart and to North and back and forth with no rhyme nor reason. Want to see the Bakkers decrying rock and roll music and have a pair of singers sing about how "Country is sweeping the nation" while having tap dancing women interrupt? Yeah, there's about 5-10 minutes of that. The whole thing feels like an SNL sketch gone horribly, horribly wrong. It's boring. It's unfunny (mostly. I did chuckle at one or two things.) It's incoherent. It's just a huge mess. And worst of all? According to IMDB, it's not even considered to be a horror film. It's adventure/fantasy, so it doesn't even count for my totals as my own personal criteria for this list is "If IMDB calls it horror, it counts." 

Just avoid, avoid, avoid. Unless you want to see swimwear fashions from 1991. In which case, yeah, you get to see some.

[JimJ]

Movie #32: Return of the Ape Man (1944)

From the studio that brought you Voodoo Man!  This also stars Bella Lugosi and John Carradine.  It's pretty terrible.  Lugosi and Carradine decide to go traipsing about the arctic, in the hopes of finding a pre-historic man frozen in the ice.  They have no reason to think that there is a frozen man in the ice, or where to look for one, they just go to "the arctic" on the off chance that one is there.  Lo and behold, they happen to find one and Lugosi brings him back to life, then decides to implant a piece of Carradine brain into his head to make him less primitive (but only a piece of the brain!  Implanting the whole brain would cause it to lose it's connection to his former life!).  This was pretty silly but kind of enjoyable.  I'm surprised it hasn't been riffed yet2/5

Movie #33: Bowery at Midnight (1942)

Double shot of Lugosi!  I kind of feel bad even counting it, because it's not really a horror movie, but it was listed under horror on instantwatcher.com and there are supposedly zombies in it, but we don't see them doing anything until the last 2 minutes or so, and then the ending has one of the zombies living with his girlfriend as if nothing ever happened, so it's possible they were never even zombies in the first place.  Anyway, it's about Bella Lugosi running a soup kitchen, from which he recruits people to help him commit crimes, and then he always eventually kills them.  The "zombies" come about because the doctor who works for him brings all of them back to life.  It was really boring and was too long despite barely being over an hour. 1.5/5

[SJP]

Working on one right now, but I'll update the last few days, since I just checked the calendar and realized I haven't posted what I've done lately...

The Beast Within

A pre-Robocop Ronny Cox is now happily married, though his new wife is in for a surprise: as they're driving home, they get stuck in the mud, and as Cox goes for help his new wife is promptly attacked and raped by some swamp monster.  17 years later, their son Michael starts getting sick, at which point the couple go to look for clues about who it was that attacked them that night, as Michael starts getting more and more homicidal and flesh-eating.

I don't quite get this movie.  I mean, yeah, it's a monster movie set-up (with a hilarious moment in which our 'protagonist' begins turning into Pruneface-from-Star-Wars ugly step-brother, and nobody starts screaming until his head swells up to twice its original size despite roughly fifteen minutes of screaming and bladder-style makeup effects), but there's this weird attempt to tie in what could be reincarnation and cicadas to the plot, which doesn't make any damn sense once you hear where the monster comes from...unless it always WAS a monster and eating people is some sort of trigger, or...you know what?  Doesn't matter, it's too much thought into a movie that doesn't deserve it.  Watch it for the hamburger scene and the guy getting his head ripped off, and leave it at that.  Not a proud moment for Ronny "Dick Jones" Cox.

Waxwork
I never had high hopes for this movie, since all I'd ever seen before this was part of the bit where the one girl gets sucked into the Dracula exhibit.  And for the first fifteen minutes, I still didn't much care for it...all the characters are creeps and deserve everything they get.  But as the movie goes on, it does become much more enjoyable, and its goofy sense of humor starts making more sense, especially when you get to the finale where everything goes bananas.  There's very little more amusing than seeing Dracula turn into a bat and try to escape, only for a guy to grab the rubber puppet, say an action movie quip, and blast the little sucker's head clean off.  I recommend it, but it does require some effort to stick with it, since the start is very off-putting.  And hey, it's got the cable guy from Return of the Living Dead 2 in it!

The Face of Marble
Here's an oddity: John Carradine plays a scientist who has found a way to bring people back from the dead...and he's NOT the bad guy.  Honest.  Turns out he's actually a calm, decent human being who really wants to help humanity, but is being thwarted by his wife's maid, who is a voodoo-worshipping witch who hates everyone in the household.  On the one hand, the movie is almost certifiably racist in only the way the 1940s could do (with Carradine's wife being the only non-white in the movie who isn't a stereotype or the villain), but it's just weird to see a movie in which the mad scientist is actually the hero of the film.  It's worth a glance for that, but be warned that it is a film that is a lot more offensive in some ways now than it was back then.

Monster Dog
Not to be confused with that direct-to-video crapfest for kids that stars Scut Farkas that came out a year or two ago, this is the Claudio Fergasso 'classic' starring Alice Cooper.  I actually went into this thinking it was actually about a monstrous demon dog and not a werewolf movie (because I've seen my fair share of those this month already...damn, why didn't I make that a challenge?), but it turns out it is...Alice Cooper comes to his ancestral home with his music video crew, only to find a stray pack of dogs...and their mysterious, gigantic puppet head honcho...are murdering people, and Cooper, whose father was already suspected and subsequently killed for belief that he was the monster, is now the prime suspect.  The movie itself is pretty average with some fun Italian-style gore (and dubbing...watch for the scenes in which dialogue occurs when no one is actually moving their lips), but the highlight is the two minute intro of the fake music video.  That song is probably the highlight of the month so far...It's called "Identity Crisises[sic]," (and here it is).  Besides just being an awesome song, Alice looks like Kramer going to a fancy dinner party in some of it, which only adds to the absurdity.

I also have Angst bookmarked to watch later, but the real movie I wanted to see for the Region 0 award is the uncut version of "Braindead" (Dead Alive to us in the U.S.), since there's about 10 minutes of footage in it that's never made it to our shores, but no one seems to have it even for streaming anywhere I look, and I have no way of viewing outside of Region 1 media (or time to watch it even if I ordered it from Amazon UK).  Any help in this regard, especially via perfectly legal means of viewing it?

[SJP]

Two quick additions:

1. I've officially stricken my recent Gary Oldman Award challenge.  This isn't because I don't think it's doable, but I counted the number of challenges already on the list...and it turns out, by sheer coincidence, we have 31 challenges.  That number is too good to ruin, so I decided not to add another one.  So, don't worry about doing that one.

2. It! The Terror from Beyond Space
It's easy to see why this is an influence for Alien...but I wouldn't go so far as to say it is a rip-off.  Sure, the airlock comes into play, but in a completely different way, and about the only similarities beyond that are "alien attacks a crew on a spaceship one by one."  That's not exactly a word-for-word remake.  And both movies have merit.  The It! of the title is a large, Creature from the Black Lagoon-looking misfit that attacks the crew and drains them of their vital fluids for sustenance, and appears impervious to almost every form of attack the crew throws at it.  Has some moments that are a bit silly nowadays (like the big wooden crate marked "Grenades" just sitting out in the middle of the ship), but some good cinematography and some nice shock moments (like the hand in the air ventilation system) that are still memorable.  Recommended.

[Starman!]

It! is a good one.

[JimJ]

Movie #34: The Vampire's Ghost (1945)

Decent little vampire story.  Nothing great or mindblowing, but it was enjoyable, and I liked John Abbot's performance as the vampire. 2.5/5

[Relaxing Dragon]

Monster Dog
Not to be confused with that direct-to-video crapfest for kids that stars Scut Farkas that came out a year or two ago, this is the Claudio Fergasso 'classic' starring Alice Cooper.  I actually went into this thinking it was actually about a monstrous demon dog and not a werewolf movie (because I've seen my fair share of those this month already...damn, why didn't I make that a challenge?), but it turns out it is...Alice Cooper comes to his ancestral home with his music video crew, only to find a stray pack of dogs...and their mysterious, gigantic puppet head honcho...are murdering people, and Cooper, whose father was already suspected and subsequently killed for belief that he was the monster, is now the prime suspect.  The movie itself is pretty average with some fun Italian-style gore (and dubbing...watch for the scenes in which dialogue occurs when no one is actually moving their lips), but the highlight is the two minute intro of the fake music video.  That song is probably the highlight of the month so far...It's called "Identity Crisises[sic]," (and here it is).  Besides just being an awesome song, Alice looks like Kramer going to a fancy dinner party in some of it, which only adds to the absurdity.

I also have Angst bookmarked to watch later, but the real movie I wanted to see for the Region 0 award is the uncut version of "Braindead" (Dead Alive to us in the U.S.), since there's about 10 minutes of footage in it that's never made it to our shores, but no one seems to have it even for streaming anywhere I look, and I have no way of viewing outside of Region 1 media (or time to watch it even if I ordered it from Amazon UK).  Any help in this regard, especially via perfectly legal means of viewing it?

I've actually had the pleasure (such that it is) of seeing Monster Dog as the surprise midnight show at a triple feature. The movie itself is indeed rather forgettable beyond some solid gore shots, but I definitely agree on that song. The thing was stuck in my head for a week after I watched it, I can't get enough of it (or that wonderfully low-rent video).

And seconded on the search for US-watchable uncut Braindead. I find it hard to believe that, in this day and age in the US, it's proving so difficult to find the full cut of a film (especially one so well known). Jackson needs to start better embracing his earlier catalog, if only to finally get a good release of it out (and a Blu-ray of Meet the Feebles, even if I'd be the only one who would buy it).