October Horror Movie a Day 2013

[Johnny Unusual]

Whew, I got a lot of catching up to do for writing the movies I've seen.

Child's Play 2

This is surprisingly fun and from what I've seen the best of the Child's Play films.  That's not saying a lot.  It's not particularly good, but it's watchable and early on has some moments of wit that are absent for most of the movie (particularly a cute scene where Chucky buries a doll which is filmed as if he's burying a person.  It also has a fun final climax.  What's more, it is better than the first one since it doesn't feel like someone taped various odds and ends together and tried to make it work.  Also, the kid actor is MUCH better in this one, playing a somewhat more world weary 6 year old.

[Compound]

Heh.

Watching a horror film at the moment where the dramatic music is a choir singing "It's evil! It's evil!" I have to admire the simpleness of that.

[RoninFox]

Whew, I got a lot of catching up to do for writing the movies I've seen.

Child's Play 2

This is surprisingly fun and from what I've seen the best of the Child's Play films.  That's not saying a lot.  It's not particularly good, but it's watchable and early on has some moments of wit that are absent for most of the movie (particularly a cute scene where Chucky buries a doll which is filmed as if he's burying a person.  It also has a fun final climax.  What's more, it is better than the first one since it doesn't feel like someone taped various odds and ends together and tried to make it work.  Also, the kid actor is MUCH better in this one, playing a somewhat more world weary 6 year old.

Has anyone seen the new Curse of Chucky yet?  I saw the trailer and it looked decent, but I haven't heard much.  Might have missed it in the recent movie thread if anyone's posted it there.

[Darth Geek]

Whew, I got a lot of catching up to do for writing the movies I've seen.

Child's Play 2

This is surprisingly fun and from what I've seen the best of the Child's Play films.  That's not saying a lot.  It's not particularly good, but it's watchable and early on has some moments of wit that are absent for most of the movie (particularly a cute scene where Chucky buries a doll which is filmed as if he's burying a person.  It also has a fun final climax.  What's more, it is better than the first one since it doesn't feel like someone taped various odds and ends together and tried to make it work.  Also, the kid actor is MUCH better in this one, playing a somewhat more world weary 6 year old.

Has anyone seen the new Curse of Chucky yet?  I saw the trailer and it looked decent, but I haven't heard much.  Might have missed it in the recent movie thread if anyone's posted it there.

I've seen reviews for it that have been pretty positive. It's on my Netflix que next.

[d00hickey]

Whew, I got a lot of catching up to do for writing the movies I've seen.

Child's Play 2

This is surprisingly fun and from what I've seen the best of the Child's Play films.  That's not saying a lot.  It's not particularly good, but it's watchable and early on has some moments of wit that are absent for most of the movie (particularly a cute scene where Chucky buries a doll which is filmed as if he's burying a person.  It also has a fun final climax.  What's more, it is better than the first one since it doesn't feel like someone taped various odds and ends together and tried to make it work.  Also, the kid actor is MUCH better in this one, playing a somewhat more world weary 6 year old.

Has anyone seen the new Curse of Chucky yet?  I saw the trailer and it looked decent, but I haven't heard much.  Might have missed it in the recent movie thread if anyone's posted it there.

I've seen reviews for it that have been pretty positive. It's on my Netflix que next.

Never heard of it until I read these posts. Looks like I know what I'm watching today.

I have also been watching a horror movie a day all month but I've been to lazy to write about them. I've been focusing on new horror (2000's). I have pretty much seen every horror movie from the 70's, 80's and 90's multiple times. I always assumed most of the new stuff is garbage but have been pleasantly proved wrong this month. 

[Charles Castle]

Here we go:

The Conjuring

There's a depressing sameness to the middlebrow horror that's being released into the multiplexes these days. Without gainsaying their various qualities, there's not a lot of difference between the basic elements of, say, The Possession and The Devil Inside and Mama and Sinister and Don't Be Afraid of the Dark and The Woman in Black. All of them represent a kind of zeitgeist, in which the signature horror of the times is the family unit under threat. This is the horror movie at its most conservative, if not at its most formulaic. This is doubly true of The Conjuring (directed by James Wan), which gathers up familiar elements from the genre toybox and assembles yet another portrait of the nuclear family under siege. If you're looking for something new, or even a fresh wrinkle on something old, you will look for it in vain in this movie.

The story follows the fortunes of two families: the Perrons, who have just moved into a house in rural Rhode Island, and the Warrens, a husband and wife team of paranormal researchers/ghost hunters. The Perrons discover in pretty short order that their house is profoundly haunted: their youngest of five daughters finds a new invisible friend, while some other force plays meaner and meaner tricks on the other members of the family. Every night at 3:07, all the clocks in the house stop. The family dog won't enter the house, and on the second day there, the dog is found dead outside. The Warrens, by contrast, have settled into a life as paranormal experts. They keep a museum of occult and cursed items in their house. But things are not hunky dory. Lorraine Warren carries with her the trauma of their last investigation, an exorcism. Ed Warren thinks he can handle investigations on his own, much to her annoyance. They have a daughter whom they leave in the care of the child's grandmother when they go out on an investigation. Eventually, the Perrons and the Warrens cross paths when Carolyn Perron seeks them out for help. Carolyn, it seems, is the particular focus of the forces in her house. The most malevolent of these forces is Bathsheba Sherman, a purported witch who possesses mothers and kills their children. The Perrons have five daughters.

The Conjuring is a fairly standard contemporary horror film, shot in a desaturated, autumnal palette, emphasizing its period (it's set in 1971) and replete with ghosts wandering into the frame at stock beats. The elements it brings to bear are all familiar: the paranormal investigators, the cursed objects (particularly beat up antique toys), demonic possession. This is another "one from column A" film. It shares its imagery with The Woman in Black (sinister toys), Mama (unseen entities playing with children), Sinister (the hanging tree), and any number of haunted house movies from The Haunting of Hill House to The Legend of Hell House to Poltergeist. You've seen this movie before, and often better. But that's the nature of genre and I really shouldn't be complaining about it. This is executed with a fair degree of professionalism, though it lacks in any kind of signature style.

Certainly, its ghosts are unimaginative. This is a movie that could have used a more competent conceptual designer, because its ghosts are nothing special: mostly human beings in pale make-up and eyes darkened with kohl. There's a crisis in horror movies surrounding the design of creatures. It's like they're not even trying anymore. There's only one scene in The Conjuring that made me sit up and take notice of its cleverness, in which a windstorm frees a sheet from a clothesline and it winds up wrapped around an unseen figure. As images go, this is witty: something new with a ghost and a sheet, that hoary old cliche. Other horror archetypes, by contrast, get short shrift. If you want a demonic witch, well, you'll be disappointed in the one in this film. I know that nobody likes the film but me (apparently), but if you want an example of truly frightening witches, take a look at Jaume Balaguero's Darkness. This film gives us Lili Taylor with a pair of contact lenses. Mind you, I like Lili Taylor and she's committed to the part, but director James Wan does her no favors. The best I can say about The Conjuring is that it has good actors in it. Both Patrick Wilson and Vera Farmiga have been making side careers in horror movies and they're both usually better than the material deserves. That's true here, as they invest the Warrens with a kind of gravity that sells them as credible supernatural paladins. That the film gives them nothing but variants of, "I don't want you to get hurt this time," and "God brought us together for a reason," as character development is almost criminal. This is another in a long line of bourgeois horror film that reifies the sanctity of the nuclear family, too, which is annoying if inevitable. It makes me appreciate Sinister and its instinct for the jugular even more than I did while I was watching it.

The thing that really galls me about this movie, though, is the sheer credulity of it. This is "based on a true story," as it were, and it's true that the Warrens and the Perrons are real people and the Warrens did investigate the Perrons's haunting in 1971. But here's where I have, shall we say, a philosophical difference with this movie. This is all presented by the movie as fact. This movie believes in what it's putting on screen and the end title features a real quote from Ed Warren that asserts as fact that "The devil exists. God exists. And for us, as people, our very destiny hinges on which we decide to follow." The movie even tries to deflect any kind of skepticism of the Warrens when, in talking to a college auditorium, they say, "We've been called ghost hunters. Paranormal researchers. Wackos." Self-deprecation as credibility. At its core, The Conjuring is religious propaganda, in the best tradition of The Exorcist. For me, this is a serious problem. It's why I don't generally like movies built around demonic possession. There's a further problem with this, though. The Warrens themselves, in real life, aren't credible.

Now, let me head this off at the pass: I can respond to supernatural horror as a fantasy, as dream language, as a manifestation of the collective unconscious, as a collection of archetypes acting as signposts to a universal massmind. As fiction, in other words. As a movie. This movie, by way of contrast, passes itself off as a true story, featuring representations of real people. As such, I think it becomes fair game for skepticism. The history of the Warrens is not above reproach. Their most famous case was the Amityville haunting, which has been thoroughly debunked in spite of what you may believe from the Hollywood versions, or from the protestations of the Warrens themselves. Their second most famous case, filmed as The Haunting in Connecticut a couple of years ago, has also been debunked. The movie's self-deprecation, when they call themselves wackos and kooks, takes on a different tone in light of the history of the people involved. If you want to suspend your disbelief for the sake of the movie, well, that's your business, I guess, and I can't argue against that. For myself, though, I find it hard to disengage my reaction to bullshit when I see it.

********

Blood and Black Lace

I rediscover Mario Bava every few years. As I watched Bava's Sei Donne Per L'Assassino, aka Blood and Black Lace (1964), I thought: "Wow. Dario Argento has been trying to make this film for decades." I've seen the film before, usually on bad prints badly cropped, but this is the first time I've ever seen the whole movie looking like this from start to finish. I can't believe what I've been missing. I've had this experience before, I should mention, when I first saw a good, uncut print of Bava's The Whip and the Body.

Here, we see the giallo mystery spring forth fully formed. This is the source of an entire cycle of films that still echoes today. This may well be Bava's most influential film, though it's hardly the director's only claim to immortality.

A masked killer is murdering the models at a house of haute coture, at first to cover a crime, then continuing to find an incriminating diary. The identity of the killer is almost entirely beside the point in this movie, and in the finest traditions of the genre this film founded, turns out to have multiple identities. It's not plotless, I should add, but the plot is secondary. It's the set-pieces that matter, the murders. These are arranged like dance numbers in a musical. The material in between is merely the setting for the jewels.

And this is gorgeous, let me tell you. Bava was still using his beloved technicolor and the film is a symphony of shadows and color. Each camera angle and tracking shot is exquisitely rendered. Bava is more overtly interested in the ultraviolence of his later films in this movie, and you could argue that this is a dry run for Bay of Blood. It has the same kind of massacre aesthetic and the same kind of rotten people at the heart of the film. But, really, this doesn't matter. The characters in this film are all fashion plates, or compositional elements, if you will, and the film is more concerned with how good they look than how well they can act. As bespeaks a movie set in the world of high fashion, this is a movie about style. It's the horror movie as pure cinema.

Which isn't to say it's empty. It's not. There's an emphasis on chaos squirming beneath the veneer of beauty. Christiana's House of Haute Coture may have a noble-sounding name, but it's a viper's den. The mannequins the film uses as a leitmotif speaks to beauty as a commodity. Like The Whip and the Body, this is a purely De Sadean movie, in which beauty and pain go hand in hand.

[Malt]

Oct.15th-The Brain That Wouldn't Die (mst3k) - I'd seen about half of the actual movie before. Pretty good riffs. Funny ending with Dr. Forrester & Frank.
Oct.16th-Manos: The Hands of Fate (mst3k) - Crow's Torgo impersonation kills me every time, and the Torgo's Pizza bit was great as well.
Oct.17th-Earth vs The Spider (mst3k) - Wow, a great episode. Enjoyable and fun to watch, great host segments,  really funny riffs, and even the movie itself is semi watchable from time to time. Mike & Joel both on camera in the same scene. All this and a bonus short subject. This really seems like one of those 'perfect' episodes.
Oct.18th-Soultaker (mst3k)
Oct.19th-Hobgoblins (mst3k) - Wow, that movie was a real piece of shit. I don't think I could ever be on enough coke to make a film that bad. Extremely childish. Great riffs though.
Oct.20th-Revenge of the Creature (mst3k) - This isn't the first Creature from the Black Lagoon sequel I'd seen before, but this one had none of the charm or adventure that the original has. Good riffs from Mike & the bots though, loved the riffs during the cattle prod scene.
Oct.21st-House on Haunted Hill (Rifftrax) - I'd seen this movie a few times before and always trailed off somehwere and lost track of what's going on, but I found with the rifftrax audio I was actually more engaged with the plot. Loved it. Also really enjoyed the acoustics of the movie coming from the tv and the riffs coming from the stereo, but that's just a minor plus.

[d00hickey]

Just watched Curse of Chucky and enjoyed it. It is allot less corny than the last few Chucky movies but it still has that uber b grade Chucky charm. If you liked any of the Chucky movies you will probably like this. The ending and post credit sequence were entertaining but they didn't make sense together, also if the pre-credits ending is real the next in the series would be totally out of place.

[Johnny Unusual]

OK, OK, got lots to get through.

Child's Play 3

Easily the worse of the films that I've seen.  I liked number 2's cat and mouse thing, but here it's mostly two dimensional jerks dying.  The last film managed to avoid that: even though the dad was kind of a jerk at the time, it is implied that he's usually pretty fair.  This one is just kind of dull.  There is a gag midway through that is kind of cute (Chucky wields a knife and yells at a would be victim, who just dies of a heart attack).  I liked the idea that Chucky would load the war game guns with live ammo but I thought it would pay off better if he tricked lots of kids to kill each other.  It's funny, I think the second one works since it was trying to right itself from the first films failings, and then in three it went too wrong in the other direction.  The whole thing is filled with eye-rolling lines ("Chucky's going to be a bro." UGH.)

Bride of Chucky

Only a slight improvement over number 3, but it really isn't good.  In fact, I'd say in its attempt to be humourous, it has much more eye rolling stuff.  References to Martha Stewart? No, thank you.  I think Ronny Yu has an appropriate energy to poppy horror films like this and Freddy Versus Jason.  He certainly hasn't made a good American film (I don't know about his Chinese work), but he clearly wants to make a fun film and brings a lot of energy to his films.  But the script is pretty tepid and good hustle on the directors part doesn't make up for his other failings.  I will admit it did have one gag that got a chuckle out of me: someone is coming and Chucky tells his new evil doll friend Tiffany to "act natural".  When the character comes in, she's put herself in a dramatic pose.

Halloween III: Season of the Witch

Watched this one in anticipation of the How Did This Get Made episode about it (By the way, if you love bad movies, you NEED to listen to this podcast.  It's amazing, especially Jason Mantzoukas.  Here's a guy who photoshopped episode quotes onto movie posters:http://www.uproxx.com/tv/2013/09/movie-studios-quoted-get-made-podcast-movie-posters/2/) Not quite as good as it's so-bad-it's-good reputation, but this a largely fun time.  I guess I just wished the film pushed the gonzo aspects just a teeny bit more.  Maybe I just needed to watch it with a friend.  Still, the villain is pretty fantastic (though I have a real hard time imagine him as a maker of juvenile novelties.  It's like if a low-rent but still talented John Gielgud played a character who made a new kind of fake dog poo).

It is sort of a shame it's so dumb: the idea of Halloween films being about a different thing each year is pretty neat and it would have been cool to continue it.  I wonder if Carpenter didn't let a second Michael Myers film happen if it could have been more accepted by audiences.  I mean, not this film, but the idea.  And I think it's cool that respected sci-fi writer Nigel Kneale (who wrote the Quatermass serials, which was a big influence on Doctor Who) wrote the script.  I just wonder if it was always ridiculously dumb or if it was ruined by Tommy Lee Wallace (even if the script was bad, he probably did make it worse).

Videodrome

I LOVE this movie.  Watched this with a friend who hadn't seen it before and she's been raving about it ever since.  If you don't know the film, it's about a sleazy TV channel owner who is looking for the next big thing... and finds it in the strange, violent, sexual TV series called Videodrome.  But in his efforts to find out what exactly Videodrome is, it might not only be altering his mind, but also his body.  I love the ambiguity of the film and while the "is it real or isn't it" thing is in play, it almost doesn't matter: even if the events aren't happening as the character experiences them, the ramifications and consequences are largely the same.  It's about a man who has no philosophy finding one... and finding that he might have been closer to it than he ever imagined.  Cronenberg is always entertaining and thought provoking, perfectly mixing the visceral horror with the psychological in a way no other director seems capable of.  The funny thing is that as grotesque and intelligent as the film is, it is actually really fun to watch.  Cronenberg often can make really unsettling subject matter very entertaining without compromising his vision.

Also love the trailer:

MST3k - Werewolf, Merlin's Shop, The Brute Man
the Night of the Living Dead Rifftrax
Some fun supplements that prevented me from losing this game.  By the by, am I alone in thinking that season 7 of MST3k was the best season?  I think it was.

[Darth Geek]

I agree with you about Child's Play 3 being pretty much insufferable (and that gag about the guy dying of a heart attack definitely deserved to be in a better movie).

Check out the Hor-Riff-ic Productions riff of Halloween III, it's great.

[d00hickey]

OMG I love Videodrome, I have watched it many times. I enjoy David Cronenberg movies, I just watched The Brood a couple weeks ago and another one about twin gynecologists which was entertaining too. 

[Darth Geek]

For some reason, I don't think I've ever actually seen Videodrome. Or maybe I did a long time ago and didn't understand it. Seems like it'd be right up my alley.

[Compound]

Has anyone seen the new Curse of Chucky yet?  I saw the trailer and it looked decent, but I haven't heard much.  Might have missed it in the recent movie thread if anyone's posted it there.

Late reply, but I watched it a few weeks ago, back on the 8th. It's much less tongue in cheek than the later Chucky films, with the film makers playing it rather straight with the concept. To use an Elm Street analogy... (Pausing here to let DG  remind people that you have riffed those....)  it's very close in tone to the first Elm Street and not constant wisecracking ala Dream Warriors.  It's worth a watch.

[Compound]

Okay, an info dump to catch up. The forum ate my reply for the Aussie Vietnam Vet Zombie film, so I'll have to rewrite it and repost it soon.

Hospital Massacre aka X-Ray
20 years after watching a childhood friend murdered, a woman checks into a hospital for a routine checkup. Things go badly.

Oy, so many issues.

Firstly, yeah, this is the movie with the "It's evil!" soundtrack. Or possibly "He sees her." They don't really enunciate well.
Secondly, apparently the doctors in this hospital don't believe in turning on a light.  Every damn office is illuminated by a single desk lamp. Apparently reading charts doesn't require light. Even the operating room has a single light.
Thirdly, and this is a sign of the times, the victim is smoking in her hospital room.  Not the movie's fault there, just a "dear lord, past, what the hell were you thinking?" thing.
Fourth, there are numerous points in the film where any sensible person would say "Screw this. I'm outta here."  Doctor Giggles was a more professional doctor.

Lousy film. The characters are props to stand there and die. Little tension. Skip it.

Hide and Go Shriek
For a graduation party, eight teens spend the night in a furniture store. Unfortunately, a serial killer has decided to join them...

Okay, what the heck is the obsession with furniture stores in horror films?  This is the third film I can think of that uses a furniture store as a setting. (The other two are Chopping Mall and Elves.) I've spent a lot of time in those places. Big stacks of chairs and file cabinets aren't any scarier than, say, a Target is after hours.

That being said, yeah, this isn't very good. The eventual killer comes out of nowhere, plot wise. As in, to use a different film from this month, "The suspected killer actually had an identical twin that never got mentioned until 10 minutes before the end of the film."  Yeah, film makers? That's cheating. Another note, the main suspect int he film has a rather large tattoo on his hand. The problem? The stunt man doing the killings doesn't and you can see his hands during the scenes. But later, the characters make reference to seeing the tattoos. Sloppy, sloppy film making there. I will give some props though. This is one fo the few films that breaks the formula and doesn't do a "whole cast kill minus the girl survivor" that most other slasher films do. Yeah, it's okay at best.

Graduation Day
After the death of a high school track member, someone begins killing off the rest of the team prior to graduation.

Holy cow! A Troma film! And holy cow! It's a Troma film from back when they were aspiring to be a real film studio, pre-Toxic Avenger days.  And it's actually not a bad little slasher film.  Yeah, it cheats a bit with the killer, once again, not setting up the rationale until late in the film, ala "Oh yeah. The brother of the girl you scared out the window saw the killing too." But otherwise, it's better than many of the other slasher films I've seen this month.

Dark Night of the Scarecrow
After four men slay a retarded man, wrongly believing that he had killed a little girl, a scarecrow appears to take revenge on them.

Okay, this one was actually quite effective. It's a TV movie, so there's no gore, but it still works very well. Larry Drake plays "Bubba" the retarded guy, and I'd ask if he ever didn't played someone of that mentality if I hadn't seen Dark Man. (And later that night watched Dr. Giggles too, since I was reminded of that film by this.) But it's a rather good film, marred only slightly by the fact that the 4 vigilantes have almost no redeeming qualities whatsoever.  Seriously, they're pond scum and even knowing that it's a horror film and they'll be killed at some point, it's hard watching these guys for an hour and a half. Still, a rather well done film.

Dead End Drive In
After an economic collapse, Australia begins shipping undesirables to drive-ins.

Personally, I'd call this sci-fi, but IMDB says it's horror so it's good to go.

One thing that movies have taught me- if there are ever any problems in the world, stay the hell away from Oz. Because they seem to go from 0 to insane at the drop of a hat. At the first sign of trouble, biker gangs along with demon semis form and roam the highways, Vietnam vets rise from the grave to snack on the locals, Jerry O'Connell starts seeing rapping Kangaroos, Einstein starts brewing beer and Agent Smith shows up in an RV wearing a dress.  Heck, I'm surprised there were no cannibal uprisings during the last Olympics.

I'm going to strike the rest of my comments here as they got a little too political, but I found the film quite lacking in both scares and in insightful views about human existence.


Blood Hook
Visitors to a local lake begin disappearing, seemingly killed by a mad fisherman.

Holy cow! Another Troma film! And it's a more modern one, so we get to see Lloyd Kaufmann spouting off nonsense before it.  Yes, Lloyd. I'm sure that Rupert Murdoch is spending time making sure that his media empire is stomping down on you. That's the reason why Troma's still on the outskirts of film making and not because you're making films like "Pot Zombies", "Tales from the Crapper" and "Poultrygeist."

That aside, this isn't truly a Troma film as they only distributed it. The film was made by Jim Mallon. Yes, the same one that a few years later created a puppet show that aired on a Minneapolis UHF channel and then was on Comedy Central then Sci-Fi, and then became a baffling series of Flash cartoons.  Sadly, it's pretty lame. I'll give props for tossing in a bit of classical music lore as the rationale for the murders, but it's not well acted and is the writing's not great either. And the makeup is rather goofy as well.  Yeah, skip it unless you're an MST3k fan, which given that you're here, you probably are. But it's not even bad enough to riff well, IMHO.

Fun fact- Kevin "I don't read the forums" Murphy was the composer for this film. Hi Kevin!

[SJP]

Well, been keeping up surprisingly well watching the movies, just not writing the reviews of them.  But, thankfully, only one of the two needs any reviews of depth.

Day 21: An American Werewolf in London (1981)

I still don't know why this played on rotation on Comedy Central so much.  Yes, it has a lot of humor in it, but it is not really a comedy...at least, it's a very dry humor that does little to lift the sense of dread that hovers over its doomed protagonist.  It's not a particularly scary movie these days because...well, not much happens.  But it does have a sense of charm, and its transformation scene is STILL the scene of record.  I mean, damn, those effects are still amazing.

David and Jack are two Americans taking a walking tour of England, and one night on the moors they are attacked by a creature that, when shot, turns back into a human.  Jack is killed, but David survives...though his survival seems to leave him the worse for wear, as he now sees an undead Jack everywhere he goes and who tells him he is a werewolf.  Trouble is, David isn't actually crazy, and his "carnivorous lunar activities" wreak havoc in an unsuspecting London.

Still a well-made movie.  Like I said, the humor is very dry, but fits the movie's tone.  And the transformation still rightly deserves the Oscar category it created.

RIFFABILITY: Medium.  I made fun of the sequel, which was easy.  This one is better made, but is well-balanced with action and humor that jokes could be put in with regularity and ease.

Day 22: Rifftrax Birdemic: Shock and Terror
So I'm doing two Rifftrax live shows this week.  I had it on my phone.  I wanted to see how it would look.

Plot: Animated GIFs attack a town populated by terrible acting.  No one truly wins.

Summary: Wow, the riffing is really good.  Wow, the movie totally sucks.

EDIT: By the way, that Videodrome trailer was made using a Commodore 64.  If I ever needed a reason to love that computer more, that is it.  Shame that Cronenberg is hit or miss with me...thankfully, Videodrome is a hit.  What a weird, wonderfully creepy movie.