Holy Schnikes! 15th Anniversary October Movie a Day!

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#12 Corpse Mania  ( 1981 ) 
A few years back I had tried the 31 horror films in 31 days challenge and something went wrong. Something to do with the PC crashing with only a day or two to go. Anyway, I recall having all of my Asian horror DVDs together in the same box. Now there are only six, the rest having been taken out of that box over the years, perhaps watched, then returned to a completely different box. What was at one time about 35 films kept together by subject is now scattered in several other boxes. I keep asking my family that if they remove a movie from a box then return it to where it had been found. Instead, my movie collection continues to be shuffled like a deck of cards. I don't know what possesses them to do this. Perhaps Pezuzu. Anyway, this is the last of the Shaw horror films I can easily find. So this movie, about the investigation of a possible serial killer at a brothel, will be the last this year. It is more of a mystery movie than a horror film, with much of the supernatural being explained away at the end. But you get your dark foggy streets, abandoned houses, mutilated corpses, and a deranged serial killer, so it feels like a horror film until the Scooby-Doo ending.

#13 Häxen ( 1922 )
So from this point on I will be digging through my boxes of films each day  and watching the first horror film I come across, and the first one I find is... Yes! Häxen. Technically a documentary made by a Dutch psychiatrist who was arguing that the witch hunts of the Medieval period were caused not by demon possessions, but by undiagnosed mental conditions. Yet most of the run time is devoted to the history of the European's belief that witchcraft existed, the hysteria that lead to witch hunts where suspected witches and warlocks, and the most chilling part of the film, reenactments of the black masses and demon f%$king the Christians were convinced was happening.

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#14 King Kong ( 1933 )
It can't be avoided because they are all clumped together and sitting on top of one of the boxes. My collection of giant ape movies which is in the smaller box earmarked for the kaiju films and so far also includes the Godzilla, Gamera and Monster Universe films. The one box no one bothers to rummage through.  I don't think most kaiju counts as horror. They are more closer to disaster movies with the monsters causing mass destruction rather than going after individual victims, with the bulk of the movie either being about monster vs armed forces, or monster vs second monster. So I am disqualifying most of the genre, otherwise that will be all I watch as this box has over 50 kaiju films at least. Giant ape movies are less like horror as we are to feel sorry for the gorilla that man has uprooted from it's home and brought to civilization where it just didn't fit in. The 1933 King Kong film is one of the few exceptions.  True, once again man has captured the ape and brought him back to civilization. But the 1933 King Kong is a f%$king murderer. It knowingly crushes or chews up innocent bystanders just because it's pissed, kills an entire subway car full of commuters for no good reason, and when trying to find the human woman he is in love within, Ann Darrow, pulls a sleeping woman from her apartment, then when realizing it isn't Ann, casually tosses her to her death. Ann is the only human Kong would never murder, yet sexually molests her every time they are alone. Now that is a monster. King Kong ranks among the best movies ever made, and not just because it created an iconic movie monster, but because it took one of the stupidest stories ever written for film and somehow made it work as a plausible thriller.

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#15 Bigfoot ( 2012 )
Only one other movie in my giant ape collection seems to qualify as horror, and that is the made for SyFy Bigfoot movie. Normally, Bigfoot isn't tall enough to qualify as a giant ape. But this one is huge. And unlike other giant ape movies where the ape is more interested in smashing buildings, Bigfoot will immediately grab any human it finds and either chew them to death, stamp on them, or rip their body into pieces.  This Bigfoot is pissed and it wants to kill everyone. The main draw of this film is it's cast. Danny Bonaduce from The Partridge Family and Greg Brady himself, Barry Williams from The Brady Bunch who are pitted against each other as rival characters.  This film was made in response to the success of another made for SyFy film from a year earlier, Megapython vs Gatoroid,  which was another of Asylum's endless CGI monster movies, but with the added gimmick of casting former teen pop stars Debbie Gibson and Tiffany as rival characters. Looking for other pop cultural icons to cast as rivals, and probably getting a lot of rejections for  Gary Coleman vs Webster in a monster movie, or Screech vs Larry, Daryl and his other brother Daryl in a monster movie, they got Danny Bonaduce and at least one of the Brady kids to commit to a film. The plot: Danny is an asshole DJ who is holding a music festival in a woodland park, which  involves clear cutting trees to create a field for the audience and stage. Barry is a environmental activist trying to stop Danny from cutting the trees down. But the mayor of the local town ( Howard Hesseman ) has the final say, and wants the money the festival will bring in. Meanwhile, Bigfoot lives in the park and violently kills anyone who wanders into his territory.  The festival goes on as planned, and the noise brings an angry Bigfoot out of the woods who in a few minutes kills most of the attendees.  Danny loses a fortune, and vows to recoup his losses by killing Bigfoot and putting the body on display, heading into the woods with some hunters.  Barry decides Bigfoot is an endangered species, and he and his environmentalist buddies go into the woods to protect Bigfoot. By now the sheriff's department ( Sherilyn Finn and Bruce Davison ) also want Bigfoot dead, and head into the woods to kill it themselves.   But Bigfoot doesn't give a shit about anyone, and kills everyone until only Barry and Danny are left alive. I won't give away the ending, but it basically leads up to the same exact closing gag as was in Megapython vs Gatoroid. The CGI is acceptable, and really good for a cable movie. But this is a film from Asylum, so they cheaped out by only having 30 seconds combined of the CGI Bigfoot, which they reuse over and over again. And like most Asylum films, despite the camp and action, is somehow monotonous. 

[stethacantus]

#16 Subterano ( 2003 )
I made it to the halfway point in this challenge, which for a while I thought I had screwed up. Going on to another box, I pulled out a DVD I didn't realize I had. A movie in a box that was so scuffed up that it was certainly a used copy, very likely from a rental shop. But it had no actors I liked, was not in a category I collected, and was not one of my favorite films. Why did I have this? Was it in one of those boxes at Blockbuster Video where they were giving away the DVDs they were going to throw out anyway? Or some other rental shop gave it away? Did someone gift it to me? Maybe a guest brought it over long ago and left it? I recalled seeing it a long time ago. Did a family member buy it for themselves and leave it in my collection once they no longer wanted it? The box cover was a picture of a bloody hand reaching out of rubble, a throw back to the typically artwork found on horror movie boxes of VHS rentals in the 80s. The tag line on the cover was  "The next level in terror", and my recollection of watching it years ago was the movie was a rip off of Saw with the group of victims trapped in an underground bunker, or something like that. I did a Google search and it was described as Science Fiction/Horror. "Well, I guess this counts as a horror film. And by my own rules, I have to watch this next." I thought to myself.  A half hour in I saw nothing bur Science Fiction and thought I had screwed up, missing a day and stuck watching a cheap Australian Sci-fi film. Eventually the horror bit did kick in. But this film just barely qualifies.  In a dystopian future, a rebel leader being transported for a public execution for assassinating the countries dictator escapes. His girlfriend who may have been the one to turn him in drives him to an underground parking garage where the rebels built an escape tunnel running under the city to a safe area known as the mountains.  Meanwhile, we are told that in this future world, everyone plays a VR game with early 90s graphics called Subterano where the object is to descend through several levels of an underworld controlled by a mysterious shadow master, each with a dangerous mini boss, and with an unbelievable master boss at the final level. The teenage developer of the game asks four of his friends to go into the same underground parking garage. Also down there is an old employee of the VR company who has just been fired, and a female security guard. The garage locks up unexpectedly, and when everyone converges on the front gate, discovers the attendant dead with a head wound. The shadow master announces himself and let's everyone know they are playing a live version of Subterano where the players will be killed off for real one by one. Which is basically what happens.  While there is some decent CGI involving liquid metal balls that form into the bosses, this is a very cheap film, which is basically filmed entirely in the same parking garage, most likely on the same level again and again doubling for lower levels of the garage. It would be pure Science Fiction if not for the gruesome way each character is killed, putting this in the category of serial killer movie much like Saw.

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#17  The Food of the Gods ( 1976 )
Before I started this I decided that all animal attack movies would count as horror. Somewhere in my boxes I have Grizzly, Tentacles and a few others where animals begin killing off humans, and you were meant to feel fear when it happened, no different than any monster movie. Although I will skip Jaws as next year I will be watching it both on June 20th to celebrate it's 50th anniversary, and on July 4th as my own yearly tradition. It seems to be a mixed opinion on what category these films fall in. For example, Wikipedia categorizes The Birds as natural horror, while categorizing this film aa science fiction. But the movie poster shows a giant rat dragging a terrified woman up into the trees. And the movie made the cover of Famous Monsters magazine. So yeah, this is a horror film. It is part of a double feature disc with a second animal attack movie I will be watching tomorrow. This film has ties to MST3K although they as of today have never riffed it. It was directed by Bert I Gordon, who's movies were frequently riffed on MST3K. In the mid 60s Bert acquired the film rights to HG Wells novel The Food of the Gods and How It Came To Earth with the plan to lift various elements from the book to make several movies credited to HG Wells. The first was Village of the Giants which MST3K did riff. The only thing these two movies share in common is goo that turns whoever eats it into giants. Football players take a vacation on a Canadian island where one of them wanders into the woods by himself and is killed by a giant wasp. Not satisfied that his friend died of natural causes, one of his team mates ( Marjoe Gortner ) returns to the island to investigate.  There he finds an old woman on a farm with a missing husband. They had both found this goo seeping out of the ground that when fed to livestock makes them grow, and had begun bottling it. But animals got into the barn, knocked over and broke some of the bottles, and now the island is infested with giant wasps and rats looking to hunt and kill the last surviving humans on the island one by one. Exactly as scary as you would expect Bert I Gordon to be capable of.

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#18 Frogs ( 1972 )
The second animal attack movie on the double feature disk. The suggestion is that the humans in this film will be attacked by killer frogs. However, not only don't any frogs kill anyone in this movie, there are no frogs in this movie at all.  Instead, the movie uses cane toads in the role of the frogs, an invasive species the state of Florida is currently trying to get rid of. And the toads don't do anything but be a constant annoyance. Ray Milland is the miserable wheelchair bound patriarch of a mostly miserable family who lives on a swamp island in the middle of a lake in Florida. Because if you are rich, that is exactly where you want your mansion to be built. The entire family is invited to the mansion to celebrate his birthday, which is basically mandatory for anyone wanting to remain in his will. Meanwhile the wildlife on this island want the family dead, and each time one of them wanders off alone, one of the critters kills them. But not the toads... I mean frogs. No, they just hop around the estate grounds in large numbers, but do nothing else. It is the reptiles, insects, leeches, and even plants that go around offing the family members. It helps them that the members of this family is dumber than a box of rocks and will walk right into any ambush the wildlife sets up. For example, one family member is killed in the greenhouse when a lizard pushes a bottle marked poison off a shelf. The victim sees this happen, yet walks over to the cloud of gas emitted from the smashed bottle and bends down to take a closer look, where the fume do him in while he has a shocked looking on his face that seems to say: "Wait a second. Greenhouse poison is deadly?" 

As the bodies pile up in whatever room in the mansion they are taken to after being found, the family begins to realize the wildlife here is killing them. But Ray is unfazed by half his family being dead, and demands that everyone stay to celebrate his birthday.  Which they at first reluctantly do, but then realize they won't be inheriting that money if they are dead too. The animals pick them off as they attempt their escape, and only the married couple with the children making it off the island alive. This is when the only truly chilling moment in the film happens. They make it to the highway where they flag down a passing car. The family in that car mention that they have been on the highway all day, and have not seen any other vehicles,  suggesting  that this phenomenon could be worldwide, and there is nowhere safe to flee. This should have been where the movie ended, but instead we go back to the island estate where miserable Ray Milland refused to leave because if no one is going to celebrate his birthday, then dammit, he's going to celebrate it on his own. His little pity party doesn't last long as the frogs break through the glass doors and begin knocking shit over, jump on the Victrola which was the Island's only sound system, and make a lot of croaking noises. And then Kermit bursts in with a shotgun and says: "HI ho! Time to die motherf$#ker!" No wait. That doesn't happen. Because just when you think the frogs converging on Ray are finally going to kill someone in this movie, he has a heart attack and dies. And the movie may as well had a Kermit the Frog ending, because after Ray croaks himself, it cuts to a cartoon of a frog with a human hand sticking out of it's mouth that it slurps up.

[Charles Castle]

Unfortunately I just have not had the time to view or write much this year at all, so I will leave a stake here and try to get back with as much as I can.

1. The Boogeyman (2023)
2. Brightburn (2019)
3. Beetlejuice, Beetlejuice (2024)
4. The Fury (1978)
5. Jennifer's Body (2009)
6. The Amityville Horror (2005)
7. The Conference (2023)
8. Longlegs (2024)
9. Cold Blows the Wind (2024)
10. Megalopolis (2024) - The horror! The horror!
11. Pet Sematary (1989)
12. Salem's Lot (2024)
13. Haunted Mansion (2023)
14. Shadow of a Doubt (1943)

[Charles Castle]

4. The Fury

Although The Fury (1978, directed by Brian De Palma) is the director's dumbest film--which is saying something--it has its compensations. Prime among them is the director's film sense, which is entirely separate from the story on screen. De Palma knows where to put the camera and when to move it. He uses slow motion and sound (or the lack thereof) to impart a sleek maximalist commercial veneer to the film. He also knows how to be cruel to the audience, like he's in some parasocial BDSM relationship with them. The Fury is also a mini-summary of his career at that moment. It's a psychic thriller a la Carrie, a paranoia thriller like Sisters (complete with sinister experiments at shadowy institutes), and it's a conspiracy film that anticipates Blow Out. It even has that wonky sense of absurdist anti-establishment humor from his earliest films. Then it blows it all up in one of the biggest what the fuck climaxes in film.

The story follows intelligence operative Peter Sandza, whose son Robin is possessed of wild talents. When the film opens, Peter and Robin are relaxing on the beach in the middle east (the film doesn't specify a country, but it's probably Israel, which is neither here nor there). Waiting on the patio above the beach is Peter's colleague, Childress, who accompanies Robin away from the beach as a terrorist raid arrives in motorboats. A group of what appears to be Arabs opens up on the crowd with machine guns, and Robin watches in horror as his dad is apparently killed in an explosion. But he hasn't been killed. He's made it back to cover on shore where he witnesses Childress paying off some of the "Arabs." This is clearly a set-up so that whichever organization Childress aligns himself with can acquire Robin and his gifts. A year passes. We meet Gillian Bellaver, a Chicago teen who exhibits ESP. Raymond Dunwoody, a private eye in Peter's employ, has spotted her and he's convinced she can lead Peter to Robin. Unfortunately, Childress and his goons have been following Dunwoody, and Peter is flushed into the open. Peter leads them on a merry chase before ultimately losing them in the fog. Gillian herself is struggling. Her powers have a tendency to injure others. She tells one of her classmates that she doesn't blame her for being a bitch because she's pregnant and reading her mind causes her a nosebleed. Her mother consents to send her to the Paragon Institute where she can develop and learn to control her powers. The Paragon Institute is a front, though. It is aligned with Childress, who recruits promising psychics from their students. It's here where Gillian first senses Robin Sandza, who she sees in a vision when she grasps the arm of Dr. McKeever, the head of the institute. She sees Robin pushed out a window while being chased by the staff. It's McKeever who does the pushing. Peter has a spy in the institute, Nurse Hester, who tells him that Childress is planning to move Gillian. He convinces her to preempt this by springing Gillian herself, so Peter can use her to find Robin. This goes awry, but Gillian escapes. Together, they travel to Childress's secret compound, but when they get there, they find that Robin is very much changed from the boy Peter raised.

If you were looking for a film where Brian De Palma's style is on full display, you could do worse than The Fury. This is a film where he pulls out all of his stylistic tricks: split diopters, flash editing of single images, long slow motion action sequence where the score replaces diegetic sound, placing his characters inside memories or psychic visions. The long chase early in the film when Peter commandeers a car from a pair of off duty police cars demonstrates a keen sense of cinematic geography as De Palma moves his pieces around the board. De Palma is a grandmaster at this sort of thing. Moreover, this sequence turns delightfully abstract when it moves into a foggy construction site, where the cars themselves are denoted by the glow of headlights. This scene also features an early role for De Palma regular Dennis Franz as one of the cops. The filmmaking is grand. The cast is game, too. Charles Durning returns from Sisters to take up the role of reluctant villain McKeever, Amy Irving gets promoted from collateral damage to telekinetic heroine from Carrie, and Carrie Snodgrass plays yet another thankless role as Nurse Hester. Andrew Stevens is perhaps less good as Robin Sandza, who goes from average kid to demonic psychic murderer without much development. The scene where Robin murders some Arab tourists on an amusement ride has a casual racism to it even if the text of the movie suggests that he's traumatized by the terrorists at the beginning of the film. There's a sad commentary on the contagious nature of violence here waiting to be unlocked, but the movie isn't interested in it, not even at the very end when it recurs. The 800 lb. gorillas in the cast are Kirk Douglas and John Cassavetes. Douglas was clinging to his macho self image as a leading man well past that persona's expiration date and he attacks the part with perhaps too much gusto. This is almost as much a self-parody as what you find the next year in the even more embarrassing Saturn 3. Cassavetes understands the assignment, though. He's subtle in his villainy. He's not a barnstormer. He's often a presence in the negative space. It's a good portrait of a man corrupted by his role in the demimonde of espionage. He lets his posture do a lot of the work. I imagine that the actor took the role in  order to finance Gloria, but that's fine. He doesn't phone it in. I honestly wonder what Cassavetes told De Palma about the resulting film, given that he once told Martin Scorsese (of Boxcar Bertha) that he had spent six months of his precious time on Earth making a piece of shit. He was blunt like that.

The film's technical expertise is in service to a story that's all over the place. The extended comedy play when Peter invades the apartment of Mother Knuckles and her family seems starkly out of place in a horror thriller, as do certain scenes of agency underlings bickering over walkie talkie when they're bored with their duties. That's fine, though. They give the film some flavor. What's not fine is the absolute stupidity of the film's climax. When Peter and Gillian make it to the compound where Robin is being held, they find him after he has murdered his handler/lover by levitating her off the ground and spinning her to death. Robin himself lurks in the ballroom where this occurs, levitating casually in the air, well off the reservation Childress intends for him. Childress relents on his enmity with Peter and sends Peter into the belly of the beast to try to talk Robin down. Robin tackles his father in a rage, perhaps thinking his dad has betrayed him or perhaps because he's just a raging psychopath at this point, and they tumble out onto the roof where Robin dangles over the edge. Peter holds on to him for dear life, but Robin is still raging and he tries to kill his dad, who lets him go. He plummets to his death, followed by distraught Peter who has no more reason to live. Let's be blunt about this: it is stupid as hell. Robin has the power of levitation, of flight even. And he falls to his death? Really? The film follows this with a weird thing with Peter's eyes glowing in tandem with Gillian's eyes. Is he communicating with her? Possessing her a la Scanners? Lending her his power? I have no idea. We see those eyes again when Gillian, after refusing to be gaslit by Childress, telekinetically destroys him by blowing him into bloody bits. Whose vengeance is this? I don't know. It's all a muddle. The image of Cassavetes exploding at the end of the film is indelible, though, and the filmmakers know it. It is both an anticipation of the famous exploding head in Scanners and inferior to it. They captured the gag with multiple cameras just to make sure and damned if they don't linger on it in pornographic fascination. The money-shot nature of the gag tends to undermine it, but it's what anyone remembers if they've seen the film, so what the hell, eh?

The lion's share of the blame for all of this has to be laid at the feet of screenwriter John Farris, adapting his own novel, but the director is not blameless. De Palma surely had the power to demand rewrites or to engage script doctors. But he didn't and this is the result. It's a bad movie with the polished sheen of a good one. De Palma is often described as a classic auteur, but auteurism only goes so far. The Fury is evidence that no amount of directorial style can rescue a truly awful screenplay. This is a lesson that De Palma should have learned on this film, but in this, he's like Charles Foster Kane confronting Boss Jim Gettys. Gettys warns Kane that "You're the greatest fool I've ever known, Kane. If it was anybody else, I'd say what's going to happen to you would be a lesson to you. Only you're going to need more than one lesson. And you're going to get more than one lesson." De Palma had more such lessons waiting in his future.

[stethacantus]

#19 The Cabinet of Dr Caligari ( 1920 )
One of the earliest serial killer films is this German Expressionist classic. A fairground attraction is a somnambulist who is in a permanent state of sleep, but during his sleepwalking phases can predict the future, which is usually the eminent death of an audience member who is brutally murdered soon after. A friend of one of the murder victims is the creepy somnambulist himself, directed by his handler, the even creepier Dr. Caligari.

#20 Gotham ( 1988 )
Well, most of my Batman films are together in the same box. I didn't expect to find anything in those films and was just moving them to see what was underneath and found two that qualify as horror. This movie I bought by mistake. Back when I was buying the Dark Knight trilogy, Amazon said "People who purchased this film also purchased this.." with the set of the Keaton/Schumacher films which I already owned, and Gotham. Wait, there was a film about Gotham City? Well, Tommy Lee Jones was on the box cover, so I wondered if this was one of them re-release on home video where they retitle the film to make it appear  to be a sequel to something, perhaps Batman Forever? But no, this was released by MGM Home Video, and they wouldn't do something like that. The box cover appeared to be Gotham City-ish with a dark looking skyline of buildings behind Tommy Lee Jones and Virginia Madsen who looked so incredibly hot as she did in most of her 80s and 90s films. And it was only $5 new, so I added it to my order. It turned out to have nothing to do with Gotham City.  But Virginia was nude in a bunch of scenes, so money well spent. I guess I kept it with the other Batman films because where else would I put it? Although, come to think of it, I may have had it on the shelf in my old place next to the other  Batman films to trick friends into borrowing it.

My recollection of the film was that Tommy was a detective and Virginia was a ghost haunting him, so probably fell into the horror category.  It sort of wasn't.  Tommy plays a detective who is hired by a man who wants him to stop his wife from harassing him. When Tommy asks why he doesn't just divorce her, he tells him he can't, because she died in a drowning accident ten years earlier.  At this point it seems as if this is going to be a ghost story. But then after Tommy tails his client for a few nights without any ghost showing up, he gets a phone call from the client saying his wife is across the street from him. This during broad daylight. Tommy shows up and is pointed to Virginia window shopping across the street. She doesn't appear to be a ghost, and is amused when Tommy approaches her to tell her that he has been hired by the man across the street who believes she is his wife's ghost. They both end up going on a date, and soon Tommy and Virginia are a couple. Okay, so if she is walking around in broad daylight and f#$king  Tommy Lee Jones, then she can't be a ghost, right? The client tells Tommy he is still convinced she is haunting him, and then mentions he has jewels that were supposed to have been buried with her that he kept for himself, so tells Tommy to offer the jewels to her if she agrees never to haunt him again. At this point the film turns into a possible scam being pulled on Tommy involving the jewels which Virginia could be in on which I won't bother to recap because it is full of spoilers in a mystery film, and because I am a bit confused as to what exactly the scam was. However, at this point Tommy begins seeing Virginia doing a lot of spooky stuff, like lumping off the roof of a high-rise, but is nowhere to be seen when Tommy looks over the ledge. Or jumping off the deck of a boat and waving goodbye as she sinks into the river. Or showing up dead and naked in his refrigerator, or later nude and under water in his bathtub, only to suddenly open her eyes and mouth Tommy's name. It is never clear if Tommy is drunk or high each time one of these visions happen, or possibly going crazy, so it is only teased throughout the movie that Virginia really is a ghost.  But Tommy seems spooked by the idea that he probably slept with a ghost. So this film may or not be a film noir with a hint of horror, and may or may not be a ghost story, or perhaps an attempted scam being pulled on Tommy that involves convincing him that Virginia is a ghost. But this is certainly a film that would fit in with Halloween.

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#21 The Batman Vs Dracula ( 2005 )
According to Wikipedia, this is a horror film. So as of my own rules of watching any horror movie I come across while going through my boxes of DVDs, this is next. The Batman was the least popular of the Batman animated series. A replacement for Batman: The Animated Series and it's spinoffs which ceased production, it was made by a completely different studio which necessitated the redesign of every character, sometimes resulting in radical reimagining of some of the villains. Despite not being as popular as the previous Batman series, there was a decision to make direct to DVD movies based on the series, including this. Joker and Penguin escape from Arkham after learning of a possible treasure stashed in a mausoleum in a Gotham graveyard. As both race for treasure, The Batman goes after Joker, who ends up appearing to fall to his death in the Gotham River. While this is going on, Penguin breaks into the mausoleum and opens the coffin inside, cutting his hand in the process and dripping his blood on the dead body. This revives the body, which turns out to be Dracula.  Because, yeah, makes perfect sense that after Dracula was killed by Von Helsing in Europe, they decided to move his body to Gotham City in the United States, and build him an expensive mausoleum.  Dracula turns Penguin into his new Renfield, then begins biting other Gotham City to turn them into his vampire army. Upon learning of The Batman, he becomes agitated, because he should be the only one called Batman, because of the transforming into a bat thing. He vows to face off against The Batman. Meanwhile, while investigating the disappearance of citizens of Gotham, The Batman discovers they were all turned into vampires, and deduces that the new socialite who just moved into town, Dr. Alucard, is really Count Dracula.  To add to his problems, Dracula had been spotted biting some of the citizens before they went missing, and the witnesses thought he was Batman.  Because Batman and Dracula look like twins. You know that old theme song from their sitcom:

Batman likes beating up crooks,
solving crimes and throwing bat hooks.
But Dracula loves Rock n Roll,
sucking blood and mind control.
What a crazy pair.

They are Batmen,
Identical Batmen all the way.
One pair of matching bookends
as different as night and day.

No wonder Batman was mistaken for Dracula. So the police want to arrest The Batman, and send an entire task force after him. Meanwhile, Joker returns live and well. Which is a complete shock, because when else has the Joker appeared to have died, and after no body was found, returns without a scratch? Joker is immediately turned into another of Dracula's Renfields, because that's what Dracula wants as his personal assistant, a crazy guy dressed up as a Rastafarian clown. Basically Joker barely does any of his Joker pranks and adds so little to the plot that there was no point having him in this movie other than to boost DVD sales. Sure Batman uses him to make a cure to vampirism, but Batman could have used any other one of the vampires as his guineapig. The movie eventually leads up to a climatic battle between Batman and Dracula where Batman's "No killing" edict is completely forgotten. Penguin ends up blamed for kidnapping everyone turned into vampires and Batman is cleared. That is how ridiculous this movie is. Which is why it is so fun to watch.

[stethacantus]

#22 Embrace of the Vampire ( 1995 )
Why do I even have this film? Blame the short lived Howard Stern message board  on his website.  There was a thread called Hot Women Only which true to it's name had sexy pictures of female celebrities and website models. The thread you always ended up on after you finished reading and commenting on the other threads, and still had some time to kill. Aside from pictures, there were also links to YouTube videos of isolated erotic scenes from movies, such as Phoebe Cates pool scene from Fast Times at Ridgemont High, as well as scenes from obscure B movies. There was a link titled Alyssa Milano Grows Up which got the most comments of any link on how hot she was. Yes, she was famous for being Tony Danza's preteen daughter in Who's The Boss?, but  was by then in her late 20s and had been in Charmed and a few other television series since then.  Well, with a page full of comments, how could I not click the link. Milano had never been an actress I found particularly attractive.  With the likes of Heather Locklear and Pamela Anderson on television, who cared about an actress who was just cute? But the clip changed my mind. The clip title was Alyssa Milano Lesbian Scene from Embrace of the Vampire, which shortly after was among YouTube's first clips to go viral. ( Sadly, the copyright police seem to have taken it down since then. )  Alyssa is being photographed by a female photographer who keeps adjusting her clothes, then begins undressing her exposing her breasts, then the two begin making out.  A few years later I am in Dollar Tree still buying cheap bargain crap because the financial crash knocked me down to pauper of which I was still recovering from, and began thumbing through there selection of $1 DVDs, most of which were those so called bargain sets with five films on one disc, all of which were Westerns or Rom-coms or films about pets you never heard of before. And a few overstock videos of movies you had heard of. And mixed in the bin was a lot of copies of Embrace of the Vampire.  "Oh, it's that film with the lesbian scene." I thought to myself, and for only a dollar, why not? Would nor be the first movie I bought purely for a sexy scene, and perhaps not the last.

I have only watched this thing twice since buying it, and that would have been once had I not found it while digging through my DVDs for this challenge.  Clearly as incredible as that lesbian scene was, it wasn't worth sitting through this film. The movie starts with the lamest emo vampire ever. Lamer than Count Chocula. Lamer than the Count from Sesame Street. Lamer than Gilligan in that episode where Gilligan thinks he is a vampire.  Just the most unthreatening vampire ever. We find out he has just a few days left to marry the reincarnation of his wife who died hundreds of years ago, or he will die. That reincarnation is Alyssa Milano, who despite having a boyfriend she says she loves, discovers she is a lesbian upon going to college.  And that plot is the majority of the film, which every now and then cuts back to emo vampire just to remind us that this is supposed to be a vampire film. As the film nears it's end, and you are beginning to think they took an already shot lesbian movie and edited in new scenes with a vampire that have nothing to do with the rest of the movie, emo finally enacts his plan to win over Alyssa and turn her into a vampire, which is not very well thought out and fails. If it is a weak retread of the Dracula story, but without Dracula and sidetracked by a coming of age lesbian plot, then this is the movie for you. Otherwise, just fast forward to the lesbian scene and forget the rest.

[stethacantus]

#23 Britghtburn ( 2019 )
I have collected nearly every superhero film released on DVD and Blu-ray, and there are many which would qualify as horror. Yet so far this is the only one I have come across, which is a bit of a surprise. I know I have the Hellboy, Blade and Ghost Rider films, along with Jonah Hex, Constantine, Morbius and perhaps some others that cross into the horror genre. Brightburn is about a couple who adopt a kid sent to Earth in a rocket, just as with the Superman origin.  And the kid develops powers, just like Clark Kent did. Except this kid is deranged, and uses his powers to go on a killing spree.  Basically what would happen if Superman turned into Jason and began killing off the Kents.

[stethacantus]

#24 The Grudge ( U.S. Remake ) ( 2004 )
The basic premise: in Japan a husband suspected his wife was having an affair and murdered her, his son and their cat. His wife's ghost in turn killed him. From that day on their house was cursed, and anyone who entered it would soon be hunted down and killed by the ghosts of the dead family. I was gifted this film and it's sequel by a friend who loved the original Japanese version, but for some reason gave me the English language remake because he thought I would not watch a subtitled film. What? I had Zatoich films going back to the 80s on VHS, all subtitled.  At least a third of the films in my library are subtitled with no English dub track. He was so enthusiastic about sharing one of his favorite Japanese films with me that he gifted me the watered down American version?  This was the first time I had watched this since then. And the entire time I kept thinking that scenes were missing, as if it was an edited version. I began to realize those scenes were from The Grudge 2. Both films were once together. But  someone borrowed this DVD then put it back in a different box, and the sequel film is not with it. Perhaps it will turn up later this week.  But I am beginning to think the sequel was the better one. This is your standard creepy Japanese ghost film with a female ghost who drags off whoever is cursed.

[SJP]

Again, been updating this regularly elsewhere, but I keep kicking myself for how long it is taking me to come back here.  I did find it funny that Food of the Gods was watched; I was hoping it was the same day, but no, two days apart.

To quote Spaceballs, "The short, short version."

13: The Thing from Another World (1951)
Famous TV Sheriff plays giant vegetable and tries to destroy an the Arctic base that awakened him.  I still prefer the Carpenter version, but this is still a very solid film all around, with technical moments that were great for the time and still look good today (shrinking effect aside).  Possibly the last film made where the scientist clamoring for peace is considering a rambling idiot...and the military is right to ignore his advice.

14: Food of the Gods (1976)
Bert I. Gordon once again shows the world he loves giant things with this tale of giant nature run amok.  I suppose the split screen effects hold up OK, but the whole thing is a bit silly.  Surprisingly gore for a PG film, but then, PG meant something different back then.  Another movie where I hadn't seen the original, but did see the sequel, and found the sequel to be genuinely more entertaining (it's still stupid, but it's a joyful stupid).

15: Demonoid (1981)
Has nothing to do with demons from space; it is about a posssessed hand that wreaks havoc to those who awakened it.  It's got a scuzzy late 70s charm, despite being released in the wrong decade, but it's surprisingly forgettable.  Until I saw the name again, I had put it out of my mind.  Does have a great moment in which one of the possessed is pulled out his own grave so the hand can find a new host, even though he's clearly beyond any mortal help.

16: Five Nights at Freddy's (2023)
Based on the PC game and franchise.  Peta has left the Hunger Games and hit the skids, getting a job as a security guard in what is clearly a nightmare factory of an old pizza fun center.  Mayhem ensues as it becomes clear he has a connection to the creepiness going on around the place.  Not bad, and I'd probably like it better if I played the games, and the animatronics are fabulous, but it seems like it stretched a lot to fit a proper plot in outside of the robots.

17: Hell Hounds (2024)
Werewolf biker and bounty hunter seek a villainous former biker pledge, while a werewolf queen makes a bid for a new lover.  Three stories happen at once, with the biker and the bounty hunter being the most memorable, and they know the monster suit sucks (but not as bad as The Hunting's was), but...ugh.  Another werewolf movie where not a whole lot happens.  Plus it looks cheap.

18: The Night Shift (2021)
Korean horror that turned out to be an anthology collection about a cartoonist who tries to find inspiration by visiting the most haunted apartment complex he can find.  It turns out to be a bad idea.
There are two segments that are great, involving the story of a pharmacist and a friend moving in with his roommate in a horrifically moldy apartment.  The hauntings are explained, but inconsistent; there's no rhyme or reason why the ghosts act so differently in the different stories.  Still, one of the better ones I've seen overall this month.  Might not be saying much.

19: Tales from the Crypt (1972)
The classic adaptation of the EC Comics by famed British studio Amicus.  A little more slow moving (or, technically, more British) than the TV series would be, but like Food of the Gods, is pretty gruesome for a PG film.  Has several very iconic moments, though, and those still hold up well, even though it is more dated than I remember it being.

20: Ghost Story (1981)
A society of elderly storytellers start getting concerned about a real life haunting when a past event comes back to haunt them. The movie itself is decent, but the scene at the beginning that kicks off most of the action has one of the silliest death scenes I've ever seen, and the special effects are so poor I almost stopped watching the movie (then, later, I rewound the death a few more times and laughed myself stupid).  The ghost in it, though, has otherwise great makeup, but at almost two hours, it's quite a slow burn.  Also, Fred Astaire was in a lot of weird movies before his passing.

21: Alien: Covenant (2017)
A less compelling crew of actors re-enacts the original Alien almost scene for scene.  The movie looks good, but I came out of this less feeling like I watched a bad movie and more disappointed that, I think, Ridley Scott really wanted to make a very different movie.  I think he felt he had to go back to xenomorphs when he would rather have explored the world of the Space Jockeys, but nobody was along for that ride.  So, we get a flashier, more effects-filled Alien redux.  Fassbender is good, but that's because he's the only thing compelling and different about the whole experience.

22: Scared to Death (1980)
A spinal fluid-sucking monster terrorizes a town, and it's up to a detective and his small group of acquaintances to deal with it.
This movie should really suck and suck hard...but you know what?  It's the first film of William Malone, who would go onto a slightly respectable career, and it's genuine proof that even if you don't have a high budget, you can still use cleverness to make a movie work.  The monster suit is clearly a labor of love, and even though most of the sets are filmed in a house (likely Malone's or a relative's), you don't get the sense of cheapness you get from something like Hell Hounds or Beast.  Plus, the detective has some great lines, and his character is surprisingly charming.  The fact that his first date ends in sex, though, is the most unbelievable part of the movie.

23: Skeleton Man (2004)
Michael Rooker and Casper van Dien, plus some very poorly dressed fellow military personnel, fight the Spirit Halloween mascot, who is apparently an ancient Iroquois warrior spirit who thought this cheap costume would make him scarier.  It's pretty dumb, but damn, Skeleton Man can really rack up the kills with great skill.  He doesn't screw around; he wants you dead, he gets the job done.  Also notable for the scene in which a man is very insistent asking for beans.

24: The Hideous Sun Demon w/ Rifftrax (1958)
Man gets bad sun-based skin disease that makes him turn into a primordial lizard man.  This makes his date to the beach awkward.
Great Rifftrax.  Don't know how I haven't watched this before, but the movie itself?  The condition doesn't make him a monster except in looks; he clearly only gets enraged and attacks when somebody tries to kill or attack him, and he tries to flee all other times.  But, I guess back in the 50s, if you looked like a monster and kill in self-defense, you've basically ensured you're tumbling over a railing to your doom at some point.

[stethacantus]

#25 The Craft ( 1996 )
Four high-school outcasts dabble in witchcraft to take revenge against those who bullied them. Then things turn dark.  Nice premise, but I always thought the casting for this film was way off. The actresses who are supposedly the bullied high school geeks were too attractive for that to be believable.  Aside from that, and a lot of bad MTV style editing during transitions, The Craft is one of the great guilty pleasure films of the 90s. One I forgot I owned, but was glad to have dug out of my collection for this challenge.