October 2015 Horror Movie a Day

[Edward J Grug III]

I just want Friday the 13th 3 in proper 3D.  None of this red and blue stuff.  And Jaws 3-D.  Why is that too much to ask?

I dunno about Ft13th, but yes, it is too much to ask anyone to spend a dollar or a minute of time on Jaws 3-D.

[Compound]

Day 6: The City of the Dead (aka Horror Hotel)
Well, good news: the Horror Hotel edition is apparently public domain (one of those 'import' ones where the name got changed, a few edits got made, and no one bothered to renew the copyright, sounds like).  Why bring this up?  Because while the movie is decent, it is prime riffing material.

Um, so did you watch the original version or this one?

[Compound]

Rodentz/ Altered Species (2001, Rats)*

While researching a cancer cure, a scientist's experiments turn rats into blood thirsty killers.

Not much to say about this one. It's a standard monster film, albeit with a CGI rat, which later alternates with a guy in a rat outfit. The only remarkable thing about it was that I got a very strong "Return of the Living Dead" vibe from it. I don't mean it's as good as that film, just that the setup is the same. Guy working long hours at job. Friends are driving around and decide to drop in on him to party at his job location. It ends badly. It's not an exact match, but it felt a lot like serial numbers were filed off of another script.

It's okay. Nothing really great or awful about it.

[SJP]

Oh, there IS a riff of City of the Dead.  No, I watched it unriffed.  Didn't even know they did one.

[JimJ]

Day 7: The Lazarus Effect (2015) 1/5

This movie was hot garbage, which is sad because I really like a lot of the cast.  It's just a boring take on the old Frankenstein idea of scientists playing god and bringing people back to life.  We've all seen this shit a hundred times, which is fine if you do something interesting or fun with the idea.  This never does and its 83 minute run time feels twice as long.

[SJP]

Day 7: Ginger Snaps

I stumbled on this little gem at my old workplace way back closer to when it first came out on disc (a long time ago, I now realize), and was expecting something along the lines of Sharktopus or Legion of the Dead.  The cover art was phenomenally bad, and I invited friends over for a good laugh.

The joke was on us.  The movie was, in fact, a real winner.  It's gross, well-written, funny, creepy, and just loads of fun.  I looked around to see if there was a better copy of it than the fullscreen, no special feature rental disc, and found a Canadian import copy.  Sadly, I recently sold it, but all the features ended up on the Scream Factory Blu-ray, so I don't feel bad about it.

The plot is, two suicidal (and death obsessed in general) sisters, Ginger and Bridget plan to off themselves by the time they turn 16 if they don't turn popular, which is looking more and more likely.  But when they are attacked by a monster in the woods and Ginger is bitten, she suddenly finds herself becoming more popular with her classmates, alienated from Bridget, and growing more hair than she ought to be.

Yes, it's a werewolf story which acts as a metaphor for maturity and puberty.  But it's done with a wicked sense of humor and has a little something in it for everybody.  And it's got a very emotional ending...which sort of got undermined by the even darker (and unnecessary) sequels, but hey, the original still holds up, even almost fifteen years down the road.

[ScottotD]

Check out the sequel, I remember it being better than the first one

[SJP]

I did see the second one, though only once.  It is certainly a darker and more serious movie with a really screwed up ending.  It's not a bad movie by any means, but I thought it did undermine the heart of the original story a bit.  The third movie, though, struck me as a wee bit pointless.

[Compound]

Varan the Unbelievable (1962)*

This is an odd one. The plot's bog standard. The American Army needs a lake for scientific research, which they find on a small Japanese island. But the locals believe an ancient creature slumbers in the lake and protest. They're ignored and the Army conducts its research, which apparently involves shelling the lake with artillery. Er, science? This wakes the creature which destroys stuff in traditional Kaiju style before being driven off by a report slamming a truck full of stuff into it.

This is simultaneously a lazy import of a Japanese film and an inventive adaptation. It's lazy in that there's almost no interaction between the two parts. The American cast refers to some characters, who are presumably the main characters in the Japanese version, but that's it. You see them for a sec, then they're gone until the climax. And in the Japanese parts, there's nothing to indicate what was going on. No dubbing. No subtitles. Nothing. But at the same time, the American parts are, well, interesting. A scientist with a Japanese wife dealing with the natives of a Japanese island who are angry about American demands on them. It's a surprising plot point for a 1962 film that was probably being aimed at kids and teens.

Other than that. it's not a very good film. There's a period of about 20 minutes towards the end where there is no dialogue at all, just boom, growl, boom, snarl! Maybe the Japanese version was better but this version's skippable.

[RoninFox]

I can imagine enjoying Nightmare maybe, but doubt Friday the 13th is for me. And I don't really have any interest in either.

Nightmare movies vary wildly in quality. The best ones to me are the original, New Nightmare, and 3. The rest of them have fun moments, largely just seeing the creative kill effects.

2 is horrible, though it has a following of its own that confuses me to no end. It gained cult status for being an underground gay horror movie, and is embraced by a lot of gay fans, and yet it seems to me like an incredibly anti-gay premise.

[JimJ]

Day 8: Fever Lake (1996) 1/5 (Riff: 3.5/5)

Terrible movie, decent Riff but not as funny as The Last Slumber Party IMO.

[Compound]

Trucks! (1997)

Trucks comes alive and begin to run amok.

Say, have you ever seen Maximum Overdrive? Then you've seen Trucks. No, really. They're both based on the same Stephen King short story. The main difference is MO had everything electronic go crazy, while Trucks just had, well, Truck, come alive. Humvees? RVs? Truckasaurus? No, just trucks, it seems.

Which one is better? I dunno. Trucks seems less goofy, ends darker and lacked the Green Goblin truck, but Overdrive had the AC/DC soundtrack. Well, neither one is very good really.

[Edward J Grug III]

Triangle - We have seen it before once, but back when it came out (2009). I enjoy this movie a whole lot. Great low budget movie with a clever execution. When it hits its stride 40 something minutes in, it really pays off.

[ScottotD]

Triangle - We have seen it before once, but back when it came out (2009). I enjoy this movie a whole lot. Great low budget movie with a clever execution. When it hits its stride 40 something minutes in, it really pays off.

Melissa George? I remember stumbling across that and really liking it

[Edward J Grug III]

Yeah, that's the one! We rented it on iTunes.