October 2015 Horror Movie a Day

[Johnny Unusual]

Don't Look Now is a gorgeous movie, beautiful and sad movie.  Actually, Alice Sweet Alice was very inspired by it (down to the killer's look).



It's not as good, but I appreciated that it wasn't really the slasher movie I expected (though slashing does happen), especially since (not by intent) this was a slasher heavy year for me.  I do have one slasher yet for this year (a Canadian one!) but it's one I've always meant to see in full (I've seen parts of it a lot, as it used to air seasonally on the Canadian Sci-fi channel).  The other two include a sci-fi classic I've never seen and a rifftrax to finish it off.

[Compound]

7 Nights of Darkness (2010)
To win a share of a million dollar, 6 reality show contestants have to spend a week in a haunted asylum. Things go badly.

A rather unmemorable group of people, 4 guys and two girls (Really? Most reality shows these days are 50/50) are contestants in a reality show set in a haunted asylum. You've got the girls, Lynn- the true believer in the occult, and Brooke, the other one. For the guys, well, for some of them I don't think we ever got names and for the others, they just weren't memorable. You've got the guy with a family, the creepy guy, the nerd-ish guy and the last guy. They're given cameras, flashlights and a set of envelopes with tasks to perform to get the cash. I'm not sure why the theoretical producers decided that people would want to watch a TV series shot in the dark on handheld cameras by amateur camerafolk, but hey. It's in the script. First night- they explore the place. Night 2- they get to hold a séance. True believer Lynn gets heavily into that and holds an enthusiastic séance with no results. Toward the end, she begins to implore for the spirit to do something, anything. Then she goes unresponsive. The rest of the cast is concerned, but not enough to actually leave. They take her back to her room and head back to sleep. Night 3- Tonight's task- perform a fake lobotomy and take photographs of it. Yeah, can't see anything that could possibly go wrong there. Thankfully, the contestants aren't given a hammer or sharp instrument so the "lobotomy" consists on strapping Brooke into a lobotomy chair (which looks like a patio chair, BTW. Not terribly scary.) After strapping her in, they take a picture. Ahhh! Ghost in the shot! Then Lynn reappears and physically attacks they others. They restrain her and take her back to her room, which she's sharing with the creep.

Things begin to accelerate at that point. Creepy Boy begins to taunt Lynn, believing that she's faking her catatonia. After a few minutes of "I could take off your clothes and sell the photos", Lynn finally moves and creepily snarls at Creepy Boy before becoming unresponsive again. Creepy Boy freaks out and heads downstairs to talk with the other contestants. At the same time, Brooke's having a rather creepy time herself, and she runs into the rest of the guys after a few minutes of terror. Once all together, Creepy Boy drops a bombshell- he's a plant that the producers cast with the goal of scaring the other members. The more folks he scares off, the bigger his paycheck. But whatever's going on with Lynn, well, that's not in the script. He wants to bug out, pronto. But the others don't believe him since he's a liar. He doesn't want to leave folks behind so he tries to find Lynn to take her out of the asylum too, but she's vanished. Later that night, the plant runs into a ghost and vanishes. The next night the other guy vanishes while he's sleeping. Down to 3. The daily task is to explore the 4th floor. Well, Family Guy locks himself in his room saying he's not going to leave until time's up.  Yeah, the ghosts can get through a locked door. Duh. Nerd guy and Brooke lock themselves in another room and decide to go with the same plan that just didn't work. Brooke hears one of the missing guys and rushes upstairs to find him. Yeah, not a good idea. Nerdy guy decides that the money isn't worth it and bolts for the front door to find it locked. The scary ghost lady gets him a few moments later.

It's not bad but the acting's... well, not very good. Plus the one moment of empathy for the cast comes, well, after they're all dead. But not bad doesn't really translate to go out and watch it.

[Compound]

The Crying Dead (2013)
A reality TV show heads to, yes, a haunted hospital to film a show. Things don't go well.

Not a good sign when, during the first two minutes of a film, an actress and an actor mispronounce the name of the towns where they're allegedly from.  (Spokane and Costa Mesa, BTW) Anyway, we've got folks shooting a ghost hunting pilot. You've got the leader who's a true believer, Angela, the semi-gothy  fellow spook fanatic, the "ditz" who's the skeptic on the team (and also the only one who got her town name correct), the show's producer, a cameraman and sound guy. You know the setup. "Hey! A haunted hospital! Yes, a bunch of folks got killed. Plus cannibals. And a trio of dead girls and a psychic lobotomy girl. No you can't stay the night. Are you insane? We can't get the show approved without a nighttime investigation. We'll break in!"

It goes as well as expected. The producer gets ghost napped. "They must be setting up a bit!" goes the leader guy. Camera guy- "They're trying to scare us! The sound guy's in on it." The 'ditz' who has shown more common sense than pretty much everyone else, gets dragged into the darkness [REC] style. "Oh. Er, run." The leader proclaims "They won't hurt us! It's our destiny to carry the word that ghosts exist to the rest of the world." He gets killed seconds after he says that. Angela and the sound guy flee. Angela gets trapped in a stairwell and 'hugged" by the ghosts. The sound guy tries to run but to no avail.

Is it good? No, not really. The acting isn't great. The plot is by the numbers. The effects aren't bad, but not great either. But I'd give it a pass. And I'm getting really sick of all these ghost hunter found footage movies. Thankfully I have three movies left in the queue and the next one is ...another found footage film. Blast.

[Edward J Grug III]

It Follows - Easily the actually scariest film we've watched for Halloween. Very well made and beautifully shot film. I read the director was going for a John Carpenter look, and you can tell.

Hope the sequel planned by the producer doesn't eventuate

[Relaxing Dragon]

It Follows - Easily the actually scariest film we've watched for Halloween. Very well made and beautifully shot film. I read the director was going for a John Carpenter look, and you can tell.

Hope the sequel planned by the producer doesn't eventuate

He did good by the John Carpenter look, but it's the John Carpenter sound that he really nailed. One of the finest synth scores in years, it was.

[Edward J Grug III]

It Follows - Easily the actually scariest film we've watched for Halloween. Very well made and beautifully shot film. I read the director was going for a John Carpenter look, and you can tell.

Hope the sequel planned by the producer doesn't eventuate

He did good by the John Carpenter look, but it's the John Carpenter sound that he really nailed. One of the finest synth scores in years, it was.

Oh yeah, we commented on how good the score was too.

[Johnny Unusual]

There's a lot of movies these days trying to go for the Carpenter score style these days.  Here's hoping for more Goblin-style scores as well.

Invasion of the Body Snatchers

The original.  Kevin McCarthy is pretty great and the movie ratchets up the tension in just the right way. Definitely among the best sci-fi films of the era.

[Edward J Grug III]

Invasion of the Body Snatchers was a film we wanted to watch this Halloween, but it wasn't easily available to us.

[JimJ]

Missed Day 27th but I hit up the Dracula double feature on Day 28, so that covers that.  I also saw two movies today, more on that in minute.  On with the updates!

Day 27: nothing

Day 28: Dracula (1931) 3/5

and

Dracula (1931) Spanish version 3/5

I don't think an in depth review for Dracula is necessary.  I honestly didn't notice much difference between the 2 versions but that might be due to Dracula fatigue I was suffering by the time the second movie got going.

Day 29: Scout's Guide to the Zombie Apocalypse (2015) 2.5/5

This movie was like Superbad and Zombieland had a deformed love child.  It was...OK.  I feel like 16 year old me would have fucking loved it though.   There's some glimpses of how this movie could have been so much better if they weren't catering to the teenage crowd and thus keep returning to lowest common denominator humor.  I am a bit ashamed to admit that I smirked a bit at the part involving a severed penis.

and

Day 29: The Night of the Wererooster (2015) 1.5/5

This is the locally made film I mentioned a week or so ago.  I wanted to like it so bad but it's just not very good.  There were some fun moments and some of the acting wasn't completely atrocious.  Some of it...  I don't regret seeing it and it's cool to see a locally made, tiny budget movie on the big screen, but I wish it was a better one than this.  Also, this was the second movie I saw in the same day that has a severed penis joke.  Scout's severed penis joke was better, for the record.

[SJP]

Day 29: Hellraiser III: Hell on Earth

Well, I went ahead and did it.  I debated whether I should watch another movie in the series, and I did.  And how was it?

As Ron Burgundy once said, "That got out of hand quick."

Summary: After a dumkopf bar owner gets blood on the pillar that showed up at the end of the second movie, Pinhead arises, wanting to form an army of Cenobites to convert the world to his hellish desires.  The only one who can stop him is a reporter, who has the one thing he wants to make it all nice and permanent: The Puzzle Box.

Oh, God.  While the production itself is pretty enough to look at, the problem here is not incompetence in the art of filmmaking itself, but that everything about the movie is just wrong.  Gone is the icky, creepy vibe of the first two.  Pinhead is super evil for no good reason (yes, I know he's a splintered between good and bad halves, but world domination was never his game).  The new Cenobites look cool, but why do they whirr like they're cyborgs?  Why is the soundtrack sound like it's stolen from an early 90s TV show?  Actually, that last question is also responsible for the overall look and tone of the film, too...one of the problems of many early 90s horror is how they dropped the grittiness of the 80s and gave everything a candy coating, when this was the last movie that needed it.  It feels too clean and nice and...well, comparatively, happy.  Plus the ending sequence, where Pinhead suddenly gets all sorts of wacky demon powers and is blowing up the backlot of Miramax (I assume) just seems so out of place.  Half the cast can't act...hell, Doug Bradley starts off trapped as a statue and he's less stiff than anyone else.  And even without the voice modulation, he can command the whole movie himself.  It makes you realize how well he did his job in the first two.

I'm guessing if the other movies suck worse than this one, then I'm better off skipping the rest of the series.  But out of curiosity, I did turn on the last one, where Doug Bradley got replaced, just to see how the actor did.  He seems way too hammy, for one, and for another his head is too wide.  Pinhead really needs to be wiry and lean, and the new guy is too doughy.

Probably the best thing about this movie is Lemmy's cover of "Hellraiser."  Yes, the unnecessary early 90s rock anthem over the credits is the highlight of the film.  And Bradley.  He's awesome no matter what he's working with.

[Compound]

I will note that the later Hellraiser films are even worse. Just FYI.

[Compound]

The Ghosts of Buxley Hall (1980)
Suffering from financial troubles, a military Academy has to merge with a School for Girls, but the plan is opposed by a trio of Civil War ghosts.

Say, how to break up a string of reality show ghost hunters getting slaughtered? Well, with a made for TV Disney film, that's how! I'm pretty sure that this is a Wonderful World of Disney product, and from the era of Disney films not being good to boot! Well, this should be a good change of pace.

So, we have a military academy that's struggling. To keep from closing down, it merges with an all-girls school. But the founder of the school, General Buxley, is still hanging around the school along with the ghosts of his wife and his Sergeant Major and he doesn't approve of the new situation. At the same time, the school gains a new student, young Jeremy. Jeremy's parents just died and his uncle George wants Jeremy to stay at the school since he's a bachelor with little experience with kids. His Aunt, on the other hand, wants Jeremy to stay with her since Jeremy's worth ten million bucks from his inheritance. Anyway, the ghosts want the women gone because they died in the 1890s and Uncle George promised a big endowment if Jeremy stays there. The Aunt wants the girls gone because she knows that with them gone, the school will go under and Jeremy will have to move in with her, because the courts won't give custody of a boy to a single man over a loving woman's custody.

Please note- these are direct quotes from the movie, not the beginnings of a rant.

So, we have a Disney setup. Two rival schools. A male headmaster of the school. An unattached female headmistress of the girl's school. The guys are highly disciplined and straight-laced. The girls are free spirits and into that new fangled rock and roll. The guys yell Geronimo when jumping. The girls yell Pocahontas. Two wacky worlds collide! Oh, and there's a janitor who keeps seeing the ghosts but no one believes him.  It's the Parent Trap, but with ghosts. And no Hayley Mills. Or Lindsay Lohan. Oh, and a horribly awkward scene where the headmaster has a sex ed class with his students and the just arrived girls. This is a Disney film, remember.  The Aunt launches several schemes to gain control of the school, eventually convincing a judge that Jeremy is crazy and seeing ghosts.  Because for a 14 year old to have an imaginary friend is completely outside the realm of possibility.  But the wife and Sgt show up and scare her causing her to vow revenge. And by the next morning, she's bought the place and has hired a wrecking crew to tear it down. Yeah, there may not have been environmental impact statements in 1980, but you needed a permit for it and I'm pretty sure that they didn't grant those overnight. And I'm also pretty sure that construction workers didn't try to tear down buildings with people still in them.  The two schools combine to drive off the confused construction workers. The ghosts help drive the Aunt off. Uncle George returns and promises an endowment as long as the schools remain co-ed. And, ho-ho, that pesky wife of the General seems to have picked up some of those new fangled "equality" ideas! Oh, you!

It's fluff, but it's pretty harmless fluff. And the kids actors may have outperformed most of the adult actors in the last few films.

[soguru]

It Follows - Easily the actually scariest film we've watched for Halloween. Very well made and beautifully shot film. I read the director was going for a John Carpenter look, and you can tell.

Hope the sequel planned by the producer doesn't eventuate

Horror movies are usually REALLY cheap to produce, so if the initial installment is successful at all, chances are very good they'll make a sequel.

[Edward J Grug III]

It Follows - Easily the actually scariest film we've watched for Halloween. Very well made and beautifully shot film. I read the director was going for a John Carpenter look, and you can tell.

Hope the sequel planned by the producer doesn't eventuate

Horror movies are usually REALLY cheap to produce, so if the initial installment is successful at all, chances are very good they'll make a sequel.

Sequels aren't automatically bad, but that it's producer lead, and that the idea he wants to produce is the characters following the chain to the beginning and getting answers (which the original creator specifically said was against the point) seems like it's not a great idea.

[Miku Fan]

I watched the hobbit, part 1.