Holy Schnikes! 15th Anniversary October Movie a Day!

[SJP]

Hello again!  Wow, what even is this?

Yes, I'm still here, sometimes, but I am doing this once again...though probably this time around, I'll be doing longer reviews on a Substack account I just created, since I need to have it do something of value (mostly I've posted about projects I'm trying to get done and encouragement posts, not so much funny stuff).

But yep, same rules as the last time:
1. 1 movie per day for 31 days.
2. You cannot 'front load' by watching movies for later days, but catch-up days are fine.
3. Lots of movies count as horror, but if you have to use the phrase, "So bad it's SCARY!" to describe it, it probably doesn't count.
4. Riffs of movies are not only allowed, they are encouraged.
5. TV Specials are acceptable.  This is so holiday classics that aren't technically 'movies' can be enjoyable.
6. Movies in a franchise each count as a separate movie, though watching only franchises might get a little dull.

And there it is!  Enjoy!

(I have been actually keeping up with this every day, but as I said above, I've been on my Substack every day with a review, and I've been meaning to put stuff on here.

1: Beyond the Darkness (1979)
2: The Devil's Rain (1975)
3: The Hunting (2022)
4: The Frighteners (1996)
5: Without Warning (1980)
6: John Dies at the End (2012)
7: Bad Channels (1992)
8: Wax Mask (1997)
9: Nefarious (2023)
10: Brain Dead (1990)
11: Transformations (1991)
12: Beast: A Monster Among Men (2013)
13: The Thing from Another World (1951)
14: Food of the Gods (1976)
15: Demonoid (1981)
16: Five Nights at Freddy's (2023)
17: Hell Hounds (2024)
18: The Night Shift (2021)
19: Tales from the Crypt (1972)
20: Ghost Story (1981)
21: Alien: Covenant (2017)
22: Scared to Death (1980)
23: Skeleton Man (2004)
24: Rifftrax: The Hideous Sun Demon (1958)
25: 13 Secrets (2016)
26: Lone Wolf (1988)
27: The Lair of the White Worm (1988)
28: Nosferatu (1979)
29: Night Vision (1987)
30: 13 Ghosts (1960)
31: It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown/Garfield's Halloween (1966/1985)

[SJP]

1: Beyond the Darkness (1979)
A young man into taxidermy inherits a mansion, and his very creepy housekeeper and him begin conducting murders...well, because.
I never saw this movie, and yet, it looked familiar, and I realized I had seen it several years ago in a Cinema Snob review.
What to make of this movie?  Well...it's memorable.  You will probably watch it and not forget it.
I've seen Joe D'Amato movies before, but of all of them?  This one is probably the sleaziest because there is pretty much no plot.  It's literally just watching people wandering aimlessly (roughly 78% of the runtime), conducting murder, getting very touchy-feely in the greasiest ways imaginable, and then it sort of ends.  One reviewer said you might need a bath afterward.  I tend to agree.  It has a style to it, but like I said above, when it's not being pervy or gory, it's very boring.  And after the camera zooms in on a nipple for roughly the 20th time, you begin to realize why this movie was made.  You really do have to wonder if Joe did it because he thought it fairly erotic or if he was trying to make it as uncomfortable as possible for the hor...no, it's very much the former.
Not really recommended, despite its reputation.  You want disturbing horror, watch Texas Chainsaw Massacre, which did this masterfully.  You want D'Amato...well, there's always Cave Dwellers.

[SJP]

2. The Devil's Rain
It's that non-pieced together Ernest Borgnine movie, you know the one, where the evil monkey keeps saying, "MCHALE! MCHALE!"
(Actually, Borgnine plays a cult leader trying to recover a book from the family that betrayed him hundreds of years ago. Occasionally, somebody melts.
This movie is on a lot of "Worst Movie" lists, and though I can understand being disappointed considering the stars in it, I didn't think it was that bad. It's not a classic, but it's watchable, with good cinematography and special effects. Well, either that, or the bar had been set so low by the previous night that anything would be better. Probably wouldn't seek it out again, but if it came on a channel, I'd probably give it another look.

[stethacantus]

When this thread comes up every year, I am interested  in being part of it, but can never find the free time. This year I realized I can find the time if:
A)  start watching immediately after getting home from work at 6pm
B) skip the network news,
C)  periodically run into the kitchen to cook my dinner, sometimes while the movie is still playing in the background. Which I can get away with because these will all be movies from my library I have already seen. And...
D) write very brief reviews every day.

As I had said in the past, the place where I currently live does not allow us to build shelves. So my entire movie library, which was once on a bunch of wall shelves in my former residence where everything was alphabetized and in separate categories,  is currently all mixed up in a bunch of boxes in the spare room where they have been since we moved here. And finding specific films is problematic, especially since family members keep removing discs from a bunch of boxes to look through them to find something to watch, then put them back in random boxes effectively shuffling the discs when I am not home. So... what I will do is dig through each box every night and play the first horror themed film I find. So I have no idea what I will be watching each day.


BUT FIRST......

I still have my Laserdiscs and VHS tapes I bought in the 80s and 90s. Recently I got into an argument on if the Laserdiscs ( not the VHS tapes.. ) should all be tossed out because I am no longer watching them, and the technology is obsolete. Okay, first of all I have a lot of movies on Laserdisc I didn't get around to upgrading on DVD or Blu-ray. And even if I had the money to do that, there some movies in my library that came out on Laserdisc and were never released on DVD or Blu-ray yet. So no, I am not tossing out my Laserdiscs. So in order to prove that I am still watching my Laserdiscs, I am going to start with watching any Laserdisc I have that is horror themed. Fortunately the Laserdisc player still works, and my television set allows for analog media. But I need to use the zoom function, and what was once state of the art clarity on CRT screens, is now blurry low res on modern screens. Maybe I should upgrade my Laserdiscs. So lets start with the first film....


#1 Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein ( 1948 )
I actually did upgrade this one. I bought the Abbott and Costello Universal Collection which had this. Then since Universal screwed up by using the Realart re release print which edits out the Universal logo, cutting out part of the opening cartoon and  the closing gag of A&C jumping into the lake after meeting the Invisible Man, they had to release a properly restored disc separately,  which I have as well. And yet, here I am watching it on Laserdisc. There are a few A&C movies that absolutely lie in their title. For example, they don't go to Mars in Abbott and Costello Go To Mars, they go to freaking Venus where instead of finding Martians and a lot of cool stuff, they find a bunch of normal looking women who kick them off the planet ten minutes later. So how does Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein lie? Simple. They don't meet Frankenstein. Frankenstein was the mad doctor who creates The Monster ( or sometimes Frankenstein's Monster,  ) which is all that it is called in every movie up until it was given the name Herman for The Munsters.  Up until this film Universal was careful to have either Doctor Frankenstein or one of his decedents in the sequels whenever Frankenstein was used in the title. The Bride of Frankenstein was actually a reference to  Doctor Frankenstein's wife Elezabeth, and not the female monster, who is called The Monster's Mate in he credits and never actually weds The Monster. Even Mel Brooks Young Frankenstein knew enough to have a descendent of Frankenstein as the protagonist. Hammer Films did one better, by having Doctor Frankenstein ( Peter Cushing ) in all their sequels, even in films The Monster wasn't in, identifying Doctor Frankenstein as the real villain of their film series. In Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein, they never meet any member of the Frankenstein family. They meet The Monster, they meet The Wolfman, they meet Dracula and they briefly meet The Invisible Man. Or at the least, get chased by each. Does this count as a horror film? The monsters are no less dangerous than in their previous films. The Wolfman nearly kills one victim. So I guess it sort of counts. Anyway, this was just the makeup movie for October 1st which I did not watch due to the debate. So A&C Meet F was the make-up movie. Here was tonight's film...

#2 Mary Shelley's Frankenstein ( 1994 )
With nothing on after Survivor but a rerun of the Climb the Mountain reality show I already watched Sunday, had enough time to watch this. Honestly, I originally bought this film because John Cleese was in it, playing a dramatic role as Doctor Frankenstein's mentor Professor Waldman who later, after being murdered, has his brain used to build the monster. Robert De Nero plays the monster in this film, one of his best performances. Kenneth Branagh plays Doctor Frankenstein, and also directed the film. I recall in interviews when this film came out hat Branagh desired to make a film adaption of Frankenstein that was faithful to the source novel. Universal sort of did that with The Bride of Frankenstein, using most of the material from the novel they didn't use in the first Frankenstein film. Branagh lamented that every adaption of Frankenstein just used the bit about the Doctor bringing the monster to life, then made up the rest of the plot from that point on. So he mad sure this film followed the novel precisely, even including the book's framing story where Doctor Frankenstein is first found by explorers nearly dead at the North Pole, then recounts his story to the captain about how he built the monster, with the bulk of the novel as a flash back. However, going trough all of this trouble to make a faithful adaption of the source novel, Branagh could not help but make one major change to the plot, having the Doctor reanimating a female monster near the end of the movie ( for reasons that would be a spoiler, so that is as much as I will say about that ) which he said he was compelled to add because he felt Mary Shelley missed the opportunity to add such a plot twist. This plot twist was probably the only part of the film that fails , so a big mistake in what was almost a perfect adaption of the novel.

[SJP]

Branagh could not help but make one major change to the plot, having the Doctor reanimating a female monster near the end of the movie ( for reasons that would be a spoiler, so that is as much as I will say about that ) which he said he was compelled to add because he felt Mary Shelley missed the opportunity to add such a plot twist.

I've never seen the movie, and it's been awhile since I read the book, but that sounds more like they changed the book a bit instead of adding, since there I was pretty sure there is a companion monster in it, if very, very briefly, that never actually gets finished, because Victor gets cold feet. I could be mistaken, though.

3: The Hunting (2022/2021)
Why are the release dates for a lot of these newer movies so weird? It says it came out in '22, but the end credits say '21. I think last year I saw several movies that did the same thing.

Cop investigates missing persons. Persons turn out not to be missing, but murdered. Murderer left behind huge paw print, so cop calls nearby wolf expert. Werewolf ensues.
I don't know Peyton Hillis, who plays the cop in this, but he's apparently an ex-football player in real life, and the only person in the whole thing that acts like a human being; everyone else spouts exposition and is very wooden. And there is a twist...and if you think you've got it figured out, well... technically, you can't, because there is crucial information missing so you can't possibly get the right answer (even though it's set up for repeat viewings to catch clues, but the most important one is not brought up...at least, I don't recall ever hearing it).
Trouble is, even if the story part was half good (it's a nice setup, even if executed poorly), the costume is...well, it looks like a Spirit Halloween Yeti. No joke, the hair looks like a shag carpet.
People, if you can't do the effect right, don't do a werewolf movie. It's important. It somehow looks better and worse than Zev from Lycan Colony at the same time (the face moves, as it's makeup, but the rest looks faker...yes, I said it!)
I don't recommend it, but the twist is admirable both in its setup and it's laughable treatment.

[stethacantus]

I've never seen the movie, and it's been awhile since I read the book, but that sounds more like they changed the book a bit instead of adding, since there I was pretty sure there is a companion monster in it, if very, very briefly, that never actually gets finished, because Victor gets cold feet. I could be mistaken, though.

That part is in the book. The Doctor nearly does build a female monster as a companion to the first monster he created, but then realizing they could breed a race of superhumans, tears the female monster apart before she is brought to life. This is also in the movie. What Branagh  added is an additional plot twist where he returns to his lab to reanimate the female monster anyway.  Something that is not in the novel.


#3 Bride of Chucky ( 1998 )
I am not into the Child's Play franchise.  This is the only film in that franchise I have actually watched. So why did I buy it on Laserdisc, the format designed so that your discs were to last more than 100 years? The bulk of the Laserdiscs I bought back then were either part of the New Wave Hong Kong cinema, or had ex-Monty Python members in the cast. In 1997 the 100 year lease Great Britain had on Hong Kong expired, and it was officially handed over to mainland China. Knowing they were soon not to be under the protection of British rule, many in the Hong Kong film industry sought to move to Hollywood. In turn, Hollywood encouraged the import of this new talent, especially as Hong Kong films were selling well on the home video market. Jet Li, John Woo and Jackie Chan were the first to plant their flags in America with their own Hollywood produced films, and were soon followed by just about everyone else who took their turns with their own American films. Some like Yuen Woo Peng carved out their own successful careers in the American film industry.  Others got fed up quickly with the long drawn out politics of getting a film green lit by a Hollywood studio and, and returned to China where the studios still green lit films the moment after any major talent pitched it. Ronny Yu was considered among Hong Kong's top directors just upon the success of his 1993 wuxia masterpiece The Bride With White Hair, which is still among my top ten favorite Hong Kong movies. Technically he had already made his American debut with Warriors of Virtue, a forgettable rip off of the live action Teenage Mutant  Ninja Turtles films that failed to launch a planned Warriors of Virtue film franchise and toy line. It was a Chinese-American-Canadian co-production, so sort of didn't count. Bride of Chucky, made a year later, would be his first full American film, and the first in a major Hollywood franchise. How could I pass up not buying it? It had "Bride" in it's title.  Could that mean the film reenacted action scenes from The Bride With White Hair, just as John Woo's Hard Target had reenacted action choreography from Hard Boiled and Chow Yun Fat's Replacement Killers reused action choreography from The Killer?

Bride of Chucky shares nothing with The Bride With White Hair, the only link being that the producer probably thought of Ronny Yu after they decided on the title of Bride of Chucky and it reminded them that the director of Bride With White Hair was probably looking for work. It is mostly a comedy, but with gags such as Chucky causing a character to flee onto a highway where he is smashed to bits by a grill of a speeding truck. Jennifer Tilly plays Tiffany Valentine, a former girlfriend of Charles Lee Ray, the serial killer who transported his soul into the Chucky doll. Tiffany is also a serial killer, and after retrieving the torn up remains of the Chucky doll, stitches it back together and uses voodoo to bring it back to life.  When Tiffany locks Chucky in a play pen after he refuses to marry her, he escapes and kills her, then as a joke traps her soul in a baby girl doll. Chucky then informs Tiffany that they can both take over the bodies of the teenage couple next door if they can find the voodoo amulet Ray had worn around his neck when he was killed. All they have to do is trick the teenagers into driving them to New Jersey where  Ray was buried and presumably is still wearing the amulet. What follows is a road trip where the clueless couple think they are being paid $1000 to hand deliver two dolls to New Jersey, and can't understand why people they meet along the way are getting killed. The movie works for what it is, and was one of the reasons Yu was selected to direct Freddy vs. Jason a few years later.  It is not a great film. But it is  entertaining as a bubblegum film.

[stethacantus]

#4 Wicked City ( 1992 )
Of all the Laserdiscs I need upgrading on, this one deserves it the most. Despite being released by Image Entertainment, the source print had a lot of splice cuts, including one that cuts most of the ending off. I am not sure if this was from normal wear and tear from it being a theatrical print, or because it was cut by censors. Released in the 90s, it was most likely sourced from a British release print, and Britain was notorious for censor edits of the Hong Kong films released in England.  Wicked City is a live action Tsui Hark produced effects film based on an Anime of the same name, which I am sure is probably superior to this version.  Depending on which dub, subtitles or release print you chose, the Earth has been invaded by a race of demons, monsters, or something called rapters. The Image Laserdiscs can't make up it's mind, because what they are called on the English dub track is different from their translated subtitles.  The original Anime calls them demons, so let's call them that, because they do take up the characteristics of Asian demons. Anyway, they have migrated from their dimension to Earth and all can take the form of humans, although each is a different looking creature with different powers when in their true form. To combat these demons are a secret government agency who act and dress like the Men in Black. Only they have psychic powers along with their weapons.  I am sure MiB was inspired by this film, as was the Blade series as the Demons seek to keep themselves a secret, and now rum a multimillion dollar corporation.  The psychic agents are of course the modern day equivalent of the Taoist priests who hunted demons and ghosts in the wuxia films, and are just as biased against the Demons. While the demon leader wants demons and humans to live in peace, a fraction wants to take over, and use their races powers to conquer mankind. What sets off the events of this film is when that faction begins selling demon drugs to the humans. One is a version of steroids which gives whoever takes it temporary superhuman strength, but also causes them to go into a violent and destructive rage. This puts the demons on the radar of the Agency, and causes a civil war among the demons, leading to a lot of mass destruction.  The plot takes so many wild turns from that point on that it would take forever to summarize it. Needless to say, the film jumps from one crazy set piece to the next. My favorite being when agents along with a friendly demon try to invade the building where the company is based, and run into one particularly nasty female demon who is made up of machine parts and can transform herself into any machine.  In this case, as an elevator to trap the heroes.  But the friendly  demon knows her weakness, and by rearranging her parts from the inside, turns her into a motorcycle that he drives around the building against her will. Plenty of other crazy shit in this film, most with the best state of the art 80s visual effects. It was fun fantasy films like this that popularized New Wave Hong Kong cinema at film festivals in the 90s, leading to those films being released on home video by companies like Image.

[stethacantus]

#5 Untold Story ( 1993 )
This horror film based on a true crime story about a serial killer who after butchering an entire family who runs a restaurant, takes over that restaurant and begins using their bodies, and the bodies of other victims,  as the ingredients to his pork buns. The only body parts he can't use are the bones, and when they begin showing up in the bay, the police begin investigating the restaurant, unaware the cook is the murderer they seek, or that the free pork buns he has been giving the police detectives for free is his victims. This is a better than usual splatter film where you actually begin to feel sorry for the killer as he is arrested and relentlessly tortured by the police to get a confession. It is only after he confesses, and you finally see the murder of the innocent family in a flashback, including their crying children who he saved for last, that all sympathy for this monster ceases. BTW, I watched this movie after midnight on Friday, which legally counts as Saturday.  There is no way in hell I could watch this film during the day or in prime time when the family is awake, and not have them demand to throw out my Laserdiscs immediately. 

[stethacantus]

#6 Witch From Nepal ( 1986 )
Most horror from Hong Kong suggests that Nepal is where dark magic is still practiced and there is a continuous battle between good magicians and evil witch doctors. Not here in Hong Kong where the modern world with all of it's science has done away with myths. But head over to that country and you will get hexed. Witch Fron Nepal draws on those fears that dark magic is just a plane ride away. Although the Witch of the title is not the threat.  An evil shaman warrior attacks and destroys a temple where ancient gems of untold power are kept. The elderly mystic warrior protector of the gems fights the shaman and is mortally wounded. His apprentice Shelia, a beautiful priestess with mystical powers, removes the gems from the temple while they are fighting, then spirits the protector away after the fight, and before the evil shaman discovers the gems are gone. Before the protector dies, he tells Sheila that a new protector has just arrived in Nepal, and she must find him. That protector is tourist Chow Yun Fat who has come to Nepal with his girlfriend for a romantic vacation. He has an accident during a safari, and while knocked out has visions of Sheila. When he returns to Hong Kong, Sheila follows him, where she tries to convince him that he is the chosen one who is to guard the sacred gems and weld the protector sword. So far, so good. But then we hit the middle of the film. And one of the biggest problems of most Hong Kong films of the 80s and 90s was that they switch tone to screwball comedy in the middle of the film, completely abandoning the earlier set up scenes. Chow Yun Fat falls in love with Sheila, and the film becomes a rom-com . Sure, Sheila shows off her magic, and Chow learns from her that he has powers and how to use them, but by this point you are stuck in an annoying and unfunny comedy. Finally, the evil shaman shows up in Hong Kong, and the film shifts back to horror. Chow must accept his destiny and face off against the shaman in a battle that Bey Logan and other historians of the New Wave Hong Kong cinema compared to the movie Highlander for some odd reason. Except for the ending battle of Highlander taking place at night, they are nothing alike. At the time Bey Logan and other proponents of Hong Kong cinema were trying to indoctrinate everyone into watching the films, so I guess comparing Witch From Nepal to Highlander was to get Highlander fans to watch that film? Highlander bombed at the box office, and while it picked up enough of a cult following on video to have sequels and a television series, it never went beyond having a cult following. It is definitely not Highlander, but is it horror? The witch of the title is Sheila, and the middle of the film is an annoying screwball rom-com. But then you have the evil shaman who uses dark magic which he uses to tear a dog barking at him in half moments upon arriving in Hong Kong. And at one point the shaman raises an army of zombies to kill the heroes, so yep, this is part horror. Just not for the entire film.

I accidentally watched a second horror film yesterday. The Horror At 37,000 Feet, which was among the 70s disaster films I was collecting. I thought the movie was one of the many 70s airliner disaster movies that were made for television. It was suggested to me by Amazon after buying Mayday At 40,000 Feet and was described as an airliner disaster. Turns out the disaster is a cursed artifact on a plane that is killing the passengers. Since the rules are not to front load, then this will not count in the total of 31 in 31. And as such, it is reviewed in the What Was The Last Movie You Watched topic.

[stethacantus]

#7 Legend of the 7 Golden Vampires ( 1974 )
I could have sworn I had the Chinese Ghost Story films on Laserdisc.  I did have Tsui Hark's Green Snake ( 1993 ) which was a varient of those films. But double checking with the various synopses on review sites, it doesn't seem to have any malevolent demons or spirits as the enemy. Just two demon snakes  ( played by Maggie Cheung and Joey Wong  when in human form ) attempting to redeem themselves, which is not really horror. The last of my Laserdiscs that would qualify as horror would be Legend of the 7 Golden Vampires. Which I also have on Blu-ray, so that will be the format I watch. From this point on I will be digging through my boxes of DVDs and Blu-rays. The first horror themed movies I come across each day will be that nights movie. I know I have some gems buried in those boxes, such as Chinese Ghost Story and original Scream trilogy.  Legend of the 7 Golden Vampires was easy enough to find, as it is at the top of one of the open boxes. Right below are seven other Shaw horror films, so that will be what I watch for the rest of the week. This movie was made around the time Hammer Films was facing bankruptcy. The British studio had been riding high on the success of their horror movies, but by the 1970s those films seemed old fashioned. Martial arts movies were the newest fad, so Hammer decided to co-produce films with Shaw Brothers. Maybe adding Kung Fu to their films could give them box office hits again,  and save their studio. Legend of the 7 Golden Vampires is a continuation of Hammer's Dracula franchise.  Dracula is summoned to China to awake the legendary 7 Golden Vampires so they can once again rampage through the country.  Coincidentally professor Van Helsing is in China on a tour of universities where he gives lectures on vampire hunting. A villager from the region that is being terrorized by the revived 7 Golden Vampire clan asks Van Helsing for his help, so escorted by a family of martial arts experts, he heads to the pagoda of the Vampires for a showdown.  The most amazing thing about this movie is that it works both as a Hammer vampire film, and as a martial arts film, with both genres complimenting each other instead of making a mess. Just about the only complaint one could have is how little screen time Dracula is given, who only shows himself in the pre-opening credits scene, and again in the final five minutes of the film where Van Helsing defeats him too easily. 

[stethacantus]

#8 Black Magic ( 1975 )
So why did Shaw Brothers start making intense horror movies in 1974? Perhaps for a few reasons. Their collaboration with Hammer on Legend of the 7 Golden Vampires was successful enough for them to decide to make more. Shaw Brothers had been distributing the Hammer films in Hong Kong for years, and with that studio going out of business, no longer had a studio supplying a regular slate of horror films, thus the need to make their own. After the death of Bruce Lee a year earlier, the martial arts film began falling into a slump, so they were looking for a popular genre to replace it. But whatever the reason, their horror films became more and more intense. Black Magic was at the beginning of their string of horror films, so is not as intense as what was to follow. But even their tamest horror film was crazy.  A spoiled rich woman  desires Ti Lung, but he will have nothing to do with her as he is already engaged to his girlfriend. So she finds a black magic sorcerer to hex the couple and make Ti fall in love with her. And things go downhill from there. The sorcerer  inflicts all sorts of curse mayhem on the couple until a practitioner of white magic stops by to nullify the curses and to stop the evil sorcerer for good, ending with a battle of magic between the two magicians using cheesy pre-Star Wars  special effects.

[stethacantus]

#9 Seeding of a Ghost ( 1983 )
A cab drivers wife is raped and killed by a thug, and instead of arresting them, the cops suspect the husband actually killed his wife, because it turned out she was having an affair with another man. After an attempt to get revenge on his own only gets his leg broken, the cab driver goes to an evil sorcerer he once accidentally ran over and begs him to put a curse on the rapist and the man she was having an affair with. The wife's rotting body is dug up and reanimated. Somewhere else in the city the rapists spine bursts open, and the wife's spirit takes over control of his body, forcing him to walk over to her and have sex with her again. The sorcerer tells the husband they are seeding a vengeful ghost in the wife, which once born, the  husband can control with his spirit. Only he won't be alive at the time, as he needs to transfer all his blood into the wife's corpse. Once this is done, the ghost in the wife's body transfers into the wife of the man she was cheating with. This all builds up to the climax where the cheaters wife is giving birth in her bedroom while their family and friends are gathered downstairs, none suspecting she is about to birth a monster,  It spectacularly bursts out of her body like Alien, killing her in the process,  and immediately spits a glob of acid onto the doctor's face, melting it. Then proceeds to run amuck in the house, grabbing the frightened inhabitants with it's tentacles and biting their limbs off with it's teeth until nearly everyone is dead. A perfect scene to watch while everyone in my living room is eating dinner.

[stethacantus]

#10 The Killer Snakes ( 1974 )
A homeless man named Chen squats in an abandoned store front next door to a pharmacy that sells organs from live Snakes  as cures. One of the snakes escapes and finds it's way into the store Chen is squatting in, and he adopts it as a pet. Soon Chen steals all the snakes from the pharmacy, and finds out they will do his bidding thanks to his act of kindness to them. Which is convenient because Chen knows a lot of lowlifes around town who in the past beat him up or abused him who he wants the snakes to kill. The Killer Snakes is a rip off of a rip off. Willard ( 1971 ), a film about a man who befriends rats and has them kill his abusive boss, was ripped off a year later with Stanley ( 1972 ), about a man who befriends rattlesnakes and has then kill his enemies. Stanley was successful enough in Asia that Shaw Brothers decided to produce and release their own knock off film about killer snakes. There are a couple of problems with this film. One is that the director had no problem mutilating and killing live snakes by his actors. It should be noted that Asians think nothing more of reptiles aa we would with insects, and we have no problem with a film that kills bees, ants or other insects on screen.  But watching what has to be a painful death for the snakes in this movie makes those scenes hard to watch. The second problem is that almost every character in this film is extremely unlikable, making it impossible to care about who the snakes kill or why. 

[stethacantus]

#11 Human Lanterns ( 1982 )
The two richest men in town are rivals who are constantly trying to one up each other.  The lantern festival is coming up, where the winner is the person with the best lantern. Determined to beat his rivaled, one of the rich men seeks out the reclusive artisan who makes the best lanterns around and commissions him. Soon after, women are being kidnapped by a psychopath in a mask who takes them back to his lair where their skin is peeled off. At this point we are not to know who the masked man is, but the title of the film pretty much gives that spoiler away. The psychopath intends to kidnap and kill woman living with both rivals in order to get them to blame each other and  physically fight each other, this over an old grudge he has against one of them. So we get martial arts action too.

[SJP]

For some reason, Hong Kong horror seems like something I should watch more of, but most of my crap barrel seems to be Italian horror movies.  Even when I'm seeing an American production, there is sometimes an Italian film crew.

Anyway, to catch up on reviews/movies, here's the short, short versions:
4: The Frighteners (1996)
Peter Jackson's goofy little Tales from the Crypt-esque film before he got to do his dream project still holds up pretty well, though you definitely see more Zemeckis in the production quality.  The only thing that doesn't the CG reaper ghost; it looks genuinely awful.

5: Without Warning (1980)
Greydon Clark, ladies and gentleman!  And it's surprisingly decent!  I would actually say this movie about an alien hunting people in a small town (yes, just like Predator, and the guy who played the Predator plays the alien in this) is probably the best movie he ever made.  It's not saying much, but it's far less silly than anything else I've seen of his.

6: John Dies at the End (2012)
I am torn as to if I like this or not.  I like the goofy humor and it's generally enjoyable, but considering the episodic source material (which I've never read, but I have seen a synopsis) and the fact that a production this size could never film inside the Luxor, it does feel rushed and tacked together with glue.  I certainly didn't hate it, but I'm hesitant to recommend it wholeheartedly, though Don Coscarelli is the right guy to put something like this together.

7: Bad Channels (1992)
A film about a shock jock who tries to warn the town of an impending alien attack using the airwaves, but due to his reputation, everyone thinks it's a gag and he gets his highest ratings ever.  Not as funny as it ought to be, it was during the 90s slump of Full Moon entertainment and drags thanks to three ill-advised showstopping musical numbers.  And I mean show stopping, as in the movie comes to a screeching halt when they come on and never recovers.  Even Blue Oyster Cult doing the rest of the soundtrack can't save it.

8: Wax Mask (1997)
The final film Lucio Fulci had a hand in, and dedicated to him by Dario Argento.  Essentially, a gorier remake of House of Wax with more lady toplessness.  Surprisingly good effects, and the performances aren't bad, and the sets and costumes make it look like a much more glamorous picture than it is, but the ending will probably make you chuckle.  It's all a bit silly.

9: Nefarious (2023)
I ended up liking this a bit more than I thought I would, even though it has a reputation due to its source material.  Considering most "faith-based" movies rub me the wrong by barely even being movies (I go to church and I find most them fairly cringey and poorly written), that this has a plot that isn't your typical preachy fare is a surprise.

10: Brain Dead (1990)
This is, I think, the movie that made Peter Jackson rename his movie Dead Alive for the U.S. market.  It may also be the only movie to feature Bill Pullman and Bill Paxton in it, but sadly, that's the only reason to watch it.  It is an old 1960s script somewhat modernized for the times, but it still ends up being nothing but a bunch of easily caught twists and mindscrews.  See it for the top "Bill-ing," but ignore the rest.

11: Transformations (1991)
This I had on VHS as a kid, and sometimes nostalgia isn't enough to make something look good.  This movie is laughably stupid, and the ending makes the prior hour and a half completely pointless.  But there is a great scene in which a character sticks his finger into the barrel of a gun and it backfires, all to the the tune of the suspenseful music that Ralphie decodes Annie's Secret Message to in A Christmas Story.  Not worth watching the whole movie to see, but if you find the clip, watch it and have a good laugh.

12: Beast: A Monster Among Men (2013)
This movie is a bait-and-switch.  I don't just mean that it looks like a werewolf movie on the poster art (it is not).  You think you're going to watch a movie, and instead, the 66 minutes that this is made of is 59 minutes of people arguing and squabbling while wandering the woods, having the exact same argument over and over.  Even the out of nowhere last minute twist isn't worth the time.  It's not the worst MADE movie I have ever seen, but I can barely even argue it's a movie at all.  It can't be made fun of, because there's nothing there TO make fun of.  It's literally nothing for its entire runtime, and I'm not meaning that hyperbolically; the only thing even resembling a motive or plot occurs 10 minutes before the end.  Avoid, avoid, avoid.