October 2015 Horror Movie a Day

[Edward J Grug III]

Christine - Amazing! I love this silly movie. I love that they don't try to explain it. And it's a fantastically well directed and shot movie. One of Carpenter's best. Watched on our new blu ray copy.

[JimJ]

Didn't watch anything on the 25th, so I've got two for today:

Day 26: The Last Witch Hunter (2015) 2.5/5

So, this isn't a very good movie, but I don't think it's as bad as its 15% on Rotten Tomatoes suggests.  It's just kind of generic and plodding, but it's not terrible.  I enjoyed both Rose Leslie and Vin Diesel's performances and the CG effects were pretty good IMO.  I wouldn't recommend going out to the theater for it but there are worse Netflix or Redbox choices you could make when it's available there.

Day 27: What We Do in the Shadows (2014) 4/5

I really enjoyed this.  Very funny vampire satire.  I've been meaning to watch this one for a while.  I was really surprised with how often I was laughing out loud during this.  One of the best horror comedies I've seen in a long time.

[Edward J Grug III]

Day 27: What We Do in the Shadows (2014) 4/5

I really enjoyed this.  Very funny vampire satire.  I've been meaning to watch this one for a while.  I was really surprised with how often I was laughing out loud during this.  One of the best horror comedies I've seen in a long time.

Yeah, I also didn't think it could sustain the entertainment for the whole movie, but I was impressed. Really hits a difficult tone perfectly, I think.

[SJP]

Day 26: V/H/S: Viral

More anthology mayhem, this time of the found footage kind.  Third in a series of films loosely based on the idea that people love a good selfie, even when being eaten by monsters.

I think this one is getting a worse beating than it deserves.  It's nowhere near as good overall as Part 2 (and oddly enough, I swear I saw part 1, but none of the stories except the wraparound and the final story sound familiar to me), but as much as the wraparound sucks beyond sucks (it really is pointless and stupid), the actual meat of the stories aren't really that bad.
Story 1: A crappy magician gets a cloak that allows him to do real magic...but it comes at a cost.  I will say this story is barely found footage in its premise, and feels more like a Tales from the Crypt episode or a really gory Amazing Stories, it's still kind of amusing.  The magician guy is a decent ham.
Story 2: A man builds a doorway to a parallel dimension and meets himself on the other side.  They both decide to travel to each other's world for a few minutes, and while much appears to be the same, what's different turns out to be deadly...for both of them.  I didn't mind this story all that much, though there are a few things that could've used a little explaining.  It is weird, to be sure.
Story 3: A bunch of stoner skater kids head down to Mexico to film some skate footage, but when one cuts himself on strange ritualistic symbol in the middle of their 'skating rink,' some uninvited guests decide to show up.  This story is the weakest of the 'main' stories, but compared to the wraparound it's pretty good.  The skater kids are all annoying, but at the same time, I actually found myself chuckling at how stupid they were, and also how they react so nonchalantly to the goings-on around them.
Wraparound: A guy looking for his big break in viral video posting decides to film a weird police chase involving an ice cream truck.  Then his girlfriend disappears into it and he gives chase.  The story sucks, plain and simple.  The actors are the worst in the whole movie, the plot makes no sense, and then there's several entirely random and pointless characters that show up that die without leaving any kind of imnpact.  The movie would've been better off without it.

I wish I could review the extra fourth movie, but I saw it streaming and that one was cut.  To give the movie some props, though, at least it was short, especially for the type of movie it is.

[Compound]

American Poltergeist/ Provoked (2013)
A ghost hunter discovers a spirit in his own home.

Well, with the title, I went into this expecting an Asylum "mockbuster" of the Poltergeist remake. It's not, but that doesn't make it any good. Anyway, we have our cast, a ghost hunter who looks like Bob Ross, his friend, who looks like Keanu Reeves and Bob's girlfriend, whom Bob is not really treating well, paying more attention to the TV and to his ghost hunting than to her. Bob gets a call to investigate a home where a teen girl and young boy were terrorized by an unseen force. (And the young boy hold up his hand to a staticy TV which just screamed out "Asylum tribute." Stupid headfake.) The family heads out for the weekend while Bob and Keanu investigate. They find nothing. No spirits, no evidence. Nada. Bob, having gotten fed up with all the dead ends in his hunting then taunts the spirit, daring it to come face him. After nothing happens, Bob and Keanu call it a day and head back to their homes. But the poltergeist hitches a ride in Bob's car.

Um, I don't think they can do that. I mean seriously, most spirits tend to be tied to a physical place or possibly a person. I've never seen them, well, hitch a ride in someone's car, which this one does. Back to Bob and girlfriend's home, the usual "oooh. Spooky Poltergeist stuff!" stuff begins to happen. Faucets turn on. Cabinets open. All the food in the cabinets Is taken out of the cabinets and then put back in before the other person enters the room. Standard ghosty fare. Bob calls a plumber to look at the water heater, since the faucets keep turning on. Okay, that's actually sensible. Also, I suspect the actor might be an actual plumber who just got called to the set. While dealing with the pipes, the girlf... oh heck, I'll look up her name ... Jamie gets attacked by the spirit and is knocked out. Bob rushes her to the hospital, leaving the plumber there alone. Um, yeah. That seems like a bad idea, even in a non-haunted home.  The plumber, after stealing a beer from the fridge, heads back to the water heater... which is next to a fireplace in the basement. The hell? Who the hell puts a water heater next to a fireplace? Anyway, OSHA concerns aside, the spook shows up and starts terrorizing the plumber, who promptly flees that house and jumps into his cargo van. Does the poltergeist follow him? Guess not. Bob and Jamie return back home and the hijinks continue until Jamie basically loses her cool. She yells at the spirit. She yells at Bob for acting like a jerk to her. She yells at him some more for not believing her about the spirit and then after Bob encountered it, becoming obsessed about it and ignoring her. That's a fair cop, really. So, Jamie grabs her stuff and Keanu, who's mysteriously appeared, takes her elsewhere. Keanu tells Bob that he'll be back to help investigate after her drops Jamie off. On the way back though, Keanu sees a mysterious little girl by the side of the road. And she's had her eyes ripped out! Well, no. While it's a decent makeup job from afar, the film makers do a closeup on the girl and it looks like they painted the "ripped out eye sockets" onto her eyelids, which completely ruins the creepiness. Anyway, Keanu's car gets run over by a semi. Back at Casa de Haunted, the attacks on Bob ramp up. He locks himself in a room, the spirit starts a fire. He grabs some salt and makes a protective circle (Hey! Good for you, script writer!) but the poltergeist fakes his voice and calls Jamie, telling her to come back over and patch things up. Bob leaves the protective circle and promptly gets dragged off into the darkness REC/Quarantine style. And as we stare at Bob's lifeless body, we hear a phone message from the mom of the teen and kid from the first part of the movie, praising Bob. Whatever he did, it seems to have removed the spirit from the house.

Yeah, not very good. It's not the worst acting I've seen this month, but keep in mind the films I've been watching, but that doesn't make it good. The F/X are minimal, and the film makers wisely go the "we don't have a budget, so let's not show the effects" route, which helps. But it's nothing special. Probably skip it, unless really desperate.

And seriously Asylum, how did you not do a "tribute" for the Poltergeist remake? That seems like an easy call. There's even a different "American Poltergeist" film that came out this year and that's not yours either! Bah.  I'm disappointed in you, Asylum.

[SJP]

Day 27: Hellbound: Hellraiser 2

The Cenobites are at it again!  An unscrupulous doctor, upon hearing about the Cenobite 'paradise' and the box, tries to manipulate the daughter from the first film and another, traumatized young woman to get him closer to what he desires.  Also, the wife from the first film loves to devour people and rebuild her skin.

While still grody and grotesque (and not as crappy as I hear the later entries in the series are), this one isn't as skin-peelingly disturbing as the original, if only because there's only so much you can take a skinless person seriously when they can just wander all around the place like there's nothing wrong (and wearing white clothing, just to piss off the dry cleaners).  I do like the fact that movie does get super-insane at the end (almost to the point of nonsense), and the reveal of who the 'Chattering Cenobite' was in his human life is properly creepy...
If you haven't seen it, it's a kid, roughly about 14-16.  That's a lot of fridge horror when you stop and think about it.

Trouble is, seeing this one has made me sort of want to see the rest, since they're all on Netflix currently.  But I understand this is a bad compulsion to have, to seek out the awful and painful.  There's irony in this, somewhere...

[Johnny Unusual]

Pacific Heights

Finally a thriller about the horrors of home ownership!  Basically, I decided with these last few days I should be seeing stuff I hadn't seen before and had a certain level of pedigree and since I seasonally like to play "Bravo's 100 Scariest Movie Moments" when I am doing other stuff, I decided to check out some films I never saw from that list.  I put this one on here thinking "Oh, I do love Michael Keaton".  I was disappointed to find a fairly dumb thriller.  Battle of wits are more interesting when one side isn't profoundly stupid.  Matthew Modine's character is so easily provoked and enraged that it's no wonder the world quickly turns against him.

Overall, there's an interesting idea in someone ruining your life and you are legally powerless to stop it, but to me it is more interesting is if the protagonists make all the smart, logical moves only to find the bad guy is still a step ahead of him.  Here, the couple (the aforementioned Modine in particular) is easily duped, particularly after they start to catch on.  I also like the idea that our hero manages to ruin the villain's life in return except it isn't particularly satisfying.  The worst part of these movies always seems to be that the set up implies a battle of wits but in the end it comes to people beating on eachother (see also really dumb Firewall and the otherwise extremely fun Grand Piano.  Seriously, if you haven't it's stupid great.)

[Edward J Grug III]

Cabin Fever - I haven't watched this movie in years, but it's still fun enough. It does have a mean streak, and I don't love the movie.

[SJP]

Day 28: A Bucket of Blood

Dick Miller is a hapless busboy who becomes the toast of the local beatnik art crowd with his realistic sculptures...so realistic, in fact, you might think he just started putting clay over dead bodies.  Hey, wait a minute...
Somehow I've managed to inadvertently stumble into my second Roger Corman movie of the month, as well as my third Dick Miller appearance (though The Hole just barely counts).  This black and white cheapie was apparently filmed before Little Shop of Horrors (but not quite as quickly) and used many of the same sets.  To be honest, I really liked this one.  I thought it was way better than Little Shop, even though they are roughly the same plot.  They're both dark little comedies, but there's just something about this one that I enjoyed.  Maybe it was the way the owner of the club squirmed every time he had to deal with the sculptures (he's the only one for a long time who suspects), or Miller as the "gosh-darn, gee-whiz" murderer who remains innocent and a clod even as he keeps killing people.  Despite its name, there's very little onscreen blood (only a little on a frying pan), but if you like Corman's good stuff (not his 'anything for a buck' style), this is one to watch.  Plus, it was a nice break from all the "gore" films I've been seeing lately.  Too many 2000s-era movies with their CG stuff.

[Edward J Grug III]

1. A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night
2. Monster House
3. The House of the Devil
4. Only Lovers Left Alive
5. Doomsday
6. The Blob
7. Onibaba
8. Triangle
9. Ghostbusters
10. The Ichabod Crane half of The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr Toad + The Lonesome Ghosts
11. Sleepy Hollow
12. The Wicker Man
13. Terror at Tenkiller (Rifftrax)
14. War of the Insects (Cinematic Titanic)
15. Beetlejuice
16. The Thing
17. King Kong
18. Diabolique
19. The Fly
20. Eyes Without a Face
21. Club Dread
22. Christine
23. Cabin Fever
24. Don't Look Now

[Compound]

FYI Geek and Sundry, Felicia Day's Twitch network, will be streaming Trick 'r' Treat on their Twitch channel ( http://www.twitch.tv/geekandsundry ) at 10 PM PST tonight. (They're part of Legendary so they have permission to do this.)  If you're looking for a fairly good horror anthology, Trick 'r' Treat qualifies.

[Johnny Unusual]

Don't Look Now, Grug?  Nice!

Alice, Sweet Alice

This is not the film I thought it was going to be, but in a good way.  I was expecting something more lurid and nasty with a horrible revelation, but in fact it's a whodunnit (with some melodrama) with a lot of blood... when there were kills.  There were really not many and it focuses more on a young Brooke Shields and questions whether of not she is the killer.

The plot focuses on a girl who is killed before she has her first communion and all of the evidence points to her older sister, who is already a bit odd and secretive and has clear mental problems that her family is aware of but, for whatever reason, haven't really addressed (basically just treating her as a "troublesome girl").  The set up makes you think there's going to be a shocking reveal within the family over what caused Alice to be so disturbed but it turns into something else and reveals the killers identity sooner than you expect (and actually exonerates Alice sooner than expected).  I still haven't decided if this is to the films detriment or benefit but the shift in focus is interesting (though I feel we should have dug into Alice's problems a bit more).  My one problem is the last shot, which isn't awful or anything but feels like a misstep.

But there is a strong theme in the movie of people who clearly have problems not being given the proper attention (or downright being given attention in a hurtful way) that I like.  And apart from the scummy landlord, most of the characters aren't just pieces of shit (the aunt is fairly unlikable, but you do sympathize with her for being troubled after a nearly lethal attack, even though we know she's going to wrongly blame Alice).  And though the movie has a strong anti-Catholic bent (according to the writer/director), even the people in the church aren't so bad.  There's a cranky, whiny monsignour but the main priest is a nice guy who is basically ignorant what is really going on and tries to help.

[Edward J Grug III]

Oops, meant to modify the original post, not quote it.

Yep, watched Don't look Now. My first time seeing it. A company here had the Blu Ray on sale for $3 (About $2.13 US) so I figured I couldn't not give it a try for that cheap!

And it was great. Beautifully shot. Looking forward to rewatching it as I'm sure it's even better on the second pass.

[ScottotD]

Sutherlandbutt in glorious HD!   

[Edward J Grug III]

If only it was in 3D.