October 19: Back in my Day…: Turn-of-the-Century Terror
167. The Avenging Conscience: or ‘Thou Shalt Not Kill’ (1914)
168a. Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1912)/Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1913)/Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1920)
168b. The Haunted Curiosity Shop (1901)
169a. Le château hanté (1897)/L’auberge ensorcelée (1897)/Une nuit terrible (1896)/Évocation spirite (1899)/Les trésors de satan (1902)/Le cake-walk infernal (1903)
169b. Faust and Marguerite (1900)/The Cavalier’s Dream (1898)/Uncle Josh in a Spooky Hotel (1900)
169c. Le spectre rouge (1907)
169d. The Haunted Hotel (1907)
169e. Haunted Spooks (1920)
170. Wolf Blood (1925)
It is now time to go back…back to the beginning. The beginning of horror in film and really the beginning of film itself. Some of the earliest films ever made after the initial deluge of “static camera pointed at street corner” flicks provided phantasmagorical delights courtesy of George Melies, perhaps best known for his delightful fantasy Trip to the Moon (and the Smashing Pumpkins video it influenced). Melies, as a magician, saw great potential in film to create worlds that could not be recreated in a stage play, using some of the earliest special effects like jump cuts to create illusions of devils popping in and out of view and items moving of their own accord. Before long, everybody got in on those fantastical visions from Edwin S. Porter to the grandmaster D.W. Griffith.
Speaking of Griffith, I kicked it off with his film The Avenging Conscience, certainly an oddball picture in his oeuvre, it’s a sort of shambling adaptation of Poe’s Tell-Tale Heart along with other disparate Poe elements mixed in. For the climax, rather using the beat of a heart, Griffith adjusts accordingly for a silent film and creates a tableau of demons the protagonist envisions is clawing at the door. The epilogue with Pan makes it even more bizarre. I’m not sure I’d call this a great film but Griffith’s skill behind the camera is evident even here.
Up next is a trio of early adaptations of Jekyll & Hyde. The 1912 version with James Cruze as Jekyll/Hyde feels the most rushed of the three (which makes sense given it’s the shortest). The 1913 version, while having a better flow than the 1912 version, is hurt by King Babbot’s portrayal of Jekyll/Hyde which just isn’t as good in my opinion. The 1920 version referenced here is not the much more well-known version starring John Barrymore as the mad doctor but is instead stars Sheldon Lewis as Jekyll/Hyde. About half the film is lost so what’s left can’t help but feel choppy in places, but it still tells a complete story and is relatively easy to follow whether you’ve read the book or not. It’s a decent version but I doubt even fully restored, it would be as good as the other 1920 version.
After Jekyll & Hyde, I ran through a bevy of various turn-of-the-century horror-themed shorts from the likes of the aforementioned Melies as well as Edwin S. Porter and others. Of particular note is The Haunted Hotel which features some delightful early stop-motion animation used to generate poltergeist activity of the breakfast preparation sort.
Haunted Spooks starring Harold Lloyd had some of Lloyd’s funniest gags in it despite a little of a slow start. The whole section of his failed attempts at suicide are very well-timed early examples of black humor. Once he gets to the haunted house, the short takes a turn into some unfortunate racist portrayals but still has some fun old dark house jokes mixed in.
Wolf Blood is more of historical interest than as an actual compelling movie. It has been cited as the first film to imply lycanthropy, although it seems to be primarily in the lead’s head. Basically a lumberjack is given a blood transfusion from a wolf after an on-the-job accident and starts to believe he is transforming into a wolf himself. Honestly it’s pretty dull for most of the run time, and I’d suggest just giving it a pass.
October 19: They Call Me Bitey: Shark Movies
171. Cruel Jaws (1995)
172. Mega Shark vs. Giant Octopus (2009)
173. The Meg (2018)
174. The Reef (2010)
“We’re gonna need a bigger helicopter!” Man, you have to admire Bruno Mattei for just the sheer size of his balls. Yes, he uses stock footage from movies like The Last Shark for his brazen ripoff Cruel Jaws but damn, his aping of Spielberg’s Jaws is beyond shameless. In addition to using footage from Jaws 1 & 2, he also basically steals the plot wholesale of a tourist town beach destination being menaced by a shark (which they call a tiger shark but most of the footage is clearly of a great white). I do love that they took personality traits of Brody and Quint from Jaws and mashed them together into the body of a shrimpy Hulk Hogan clone here. I could watch that dude all day.
Going from one cheesefest to another, we have The Asylum’s Mega Shark vs Giant Octopus, which has launched its own crappy franchise. This one is a little hit or miss from a watchability standpoint. The budgetary constraints are palpable with a large chunk of the movie taking place within the small confines of the submarine with the occasional external shots of the titular monsters fight, eating the Golden Gate bridge, etc. I almost think these movies would play better as one of those clip compilations I watched earlier with all the cheesy shark fights and none of the bad human actors padding out the runtime with overacting.
Watching The Meg right after Mega Shark, it’s even more apparent than when I initially saw the trailer for it a couple years ago that it is basically an Asylum movie with a MUCH bigger budget and a MUCH more well-known cast. Plotwise and even at times scriptwise, it is very much of the same ilk as the schlock that The Asylum churns out. Having said that, it definitely makes good use of both its budget and its actors with some very fun effects sequences and highly capable acting with quippy zingers and life-threatening drama portrayed both with gusto. This isn’t an amazing movie or anything but watching it right after a similar Asylum movie highlights how the same material in more capable hands can be entertaining.
The Reef is another in the water survival sub-genre that films like Open Water and the Shallows also fall into. And it is very much a lesser effort for the most part. It’s fairly dull with little happening beyond people floundering around in the water and panicking. Honestly just watch The Shallows instead. It’s got more of a pulpy fun vibe to it.
October 19: KIDDIE KORNER!
175. The Mad, Mad, Mad Monsters (1972)
Rankin & Bass basically returns to the monster mash party theme of Mad Monster Party with this more traditionally animated TV special that basically involves Frankenstein organizing the wedding of his monster and bride, ensuring that all their friends show up. And man, this thing spends a LONG time, like nearly twenty minutes, just having scene after scene of a jittery postman delivering wedding invitations to monster after monster and being consistently dumbfounded at each one of them (like you think he’d get used to seeing monsters eventually).It finally gets to the wedding prep in the second half though with the monster getting last minute jitters but the Baron (Bob McFadden doing a solid Karloff impersonation here) talking him down. It’s a decent one for kids (my daughter actually seemed to like seeing all the monsters here…for some reason she especially got fixated on the invisible man’s invisible pet dog) but the sketchy cheap animation drags it down some.
October 20: Evil Things!, or Possessed Possessions
176. Velvet Buzzsaw (2019)
177. Gabal a.k.a. The Wig (2005)
178. Amityville: Doghouse (1996)
Velvet Buzzsaw casts the art world through a satirical and very cynical lens with art dealers as soulless money grubbers, critics as caving to the whims of the ambitious and colluding with artists who are self-deluded hacks. When an assistant to a prominent art dealer discovers untold outsider art riches upstairs from her apartment in the form of intense paintings that had been done by a reclusive artist who had just died, it stirs up a bee’s nest of backstabbing, lying and a string of bizarre fatal accidents involving everyone involved in profiting off the paintings… almost as if the paintings are cursed. I have mixed feelings about this one. It is definitely not on the same level as Gilroy’s previous film Nightcrawler. Velvet Buzzsaw is far too scattered for that. It seems to spend far too much time in the set up, living amongst the pretentious denizens of the art galleries, too interested in the vapid dealings of its characters to actual gear up the horror elements until it’s almost too late. Despite the long run time, the last twenty minutes or so feels very rushed. Regardless, it does have flashes of a great film mixed into all the mess, almost like a beautiful piece of art left unfocused and unfinished based on its original vision.
When I read the description of Gabal talking about an evil wig, I had visions of something quite silly. On the contrary though, this film is deadly serious and permeated with a deep and foreboding sadness. When a terminally ill woman is gifted a long black wig by her sister, her disposition starts to improve. Unfortunately her personality starts to change as well. This one is a solid effort although some may actually complain that its too slow in places. It actually reminds me of the works of Kiyoshi Kurosawa more than the more generic J-horror Takashi Shimizu churns out that the poster art seems to be advertising. For a more crazy, insane version of an evil hair film, Sion Sono’s Exte would make for a good double feature with this one if you want similar themes with wildly contrasting tones.
This might be a rather controversial statement, but I think I may actually enjoy watching the more batshit insane Amityville “possessed things” sequels than the original. It’s like every one of them embraces the cheesiness of the premise and realizes they can’t compete in serious tone with the original, so they spin off into their own ridiculous directions. After a possessed lamp, a possessed clock and a possessed mirror (which I haven’t seen….yet…), we now come to an evil dollhouse. And if you watched the one with the evil clock and thought, ‘c’mon, they can’t possibly get any crazier than all the time traveling weirdness in this one’, you would be wrong. A giant mouse, zombies, voodoo dolls, spontaneous combustion and other random stuff is thrown into this gibberish brew. It’s delightful.
October 20: In The Deep, Dark Woods….
179. La región salvaje a.k.a. The Untamed (2016)
180. Things (1989)
181. Welp a.k.a. Cub (2014)
182. The Hallow (2015)
If horror movies have taught me anything it’s that bad stuff happens in the woods. It’s best to just avoid them altogether. Murderers, demons, witches, you name it. They’re all in there.
According to The Untamed, there’s some kind of fucking tentacle monster in those woods. This is a hard one to get my arms around. At first it seems to be about a marriage that’s crumbling apart. The wife and mother seems to be frayed and stressed with her husband away having an affair with another man. So when a mysterious woman comes into their lives and takes them to a cabin out in the woods to partake in some kind of bizarre sexually charged tentacle orgy, it may just be that pick-me-up their relationship needs. I know this one has drawn comparisons to Zulawski’s Possession in some ways by using some strange alien presence as a conduit for sexual and emotional freedom, but the tone feels very different with The Untamed. Rather than with the heightened gnashing of teeth and broad theatrics of Possession, The Untamed instead feels much more like a somber indie drama at times which only increases the impact of the more bizarre, perverse scenes when they do come. I wouldn’t recommend this to everyone, but if you are in the right mood for a particular kind of art horror (or if you want to see what a live action hentai would look like), then this may scratch that itch.
Things… Things is a gift from God. It’s a must-watch. I shall leave it at that.
Cub is a decent one from Belgium that finds a group of scouts heading off to a camping trip in some woods that are supposedly populated by a feral kid named Kai that kills and eats other kids. One scout in particular in relentlessly picked and actually strikes up a kind of uneasy friendship with this feral kid. But is the feral kid really the only danger out in the woods? I’m always unsure how far to take spoilers. There are certain comments I’d like to make about this one, but they would definitely spoil some aspects of the movie I think the filmmakers intended to be a surprise twist. Anyway, it’s not a bad movie and is actually pretty entertaining even though it does get pretty brutal in a couple places. Certain things end up fairly predictable but overall, I’d say it’s worth a watch.
The setup for The Hallow isn’t all that creative (family moves out into the remote wilds and is beset by some kind of foul creatures), but the creature designs here are actually quite good and genuinely pretty nasty-looking fellas done with practical effects. When the movie gets going, it really ends up being a series of chase and siege sequences, I think mostly to showcase the creature work. But really I’m fine with that. Sometimes you just wanna see a bunch of vicious monsters attack people.
October 20: School’s Out Forever: ’80s School-Based Slashers
183. Cutting Class (1989)
184. Return to Horror High (1987)
185. Splatter University (1984)
Man… I was sooo close to having an even more ludicrously specific theme to this one. In addition to all three of these having school themes referenced in the title and being ’80s slashers, two of the three are early films from the cast of the remake of Ocean’s Eleven (with Brad Pitt in Cutting Class and George Clooney in Return to Horror High). I seriously really tried to find a third one to fit the theme but gave up after about 30 or 40 minutes of searching and just decided to go with the ’80s school slasher theme. Anyway…
Cutting Class has a pretty standard slasher setup. A series of murders start occurring at a high school and a mentally disturbed former student is suspected. Plus hey, it’s got Brad Pitt in an early role. So yes, this is a fairly standard slasher, but if you are into those, it has a decent variety of kills and a solid pace that doesn’t get too boring. It’s worth a watch if you like slashers in particular.
Return to Horror High is a damned weird one. It’s a much earlier example of a kind of meta-slasher that Scream popularized (and even has a very similar plot to Scream 3 about a series of killings that break out on the set of a movie that’s being made about a string of killings). While an idea can go a long way, it can’t make up for seemingly intentionally confusing editing. The movie is constantly playing out scenes that it leads you to think are scenes in the movie but that are actually really happening or vice versa. The problem is that it’s rarely clear even after the scene is over which one it actually was. I feel like it may have a genuinely clever script that got messed up in the translation to screen. It does have a pretty ridiculous ending though that (maybe?) holds water when I think back about it.
October 20: KIDDIE KORNER!
186. Don’t Look Under the Bed (1999)
So the actual underlying premise of this one (that neglected imaginary friends actually transform into the boogeyman if they are forgotten by their friend) is an interesting one, but the execution here is just not great. In particular the guy playing Larry Houdini, the main imaginary friend is so obnoxious… He really seems to be reaching for that Robin Williams level of manic energy and just comes across relentlessly annoying. My kids didn’t give this one the time of day.
October 21: Danse Macabre: Films Based on Works of Stephen King
187. Doctor Sleep (2019)
188. Mercy (2014)
189. Desperation (2006)
When one thinks of the horror genre, Stephen King’s name is almost synonymous with it. While many of his film adaptations have been straight up awful (it would honestly take too long to list all of them but I will at least call out how awesomely terrible Maximum Overdrive is), some of the adaptations of his books are stone cold classics like Kubrick’s The Shining and De Palma’s Carrie. So I thought I’d take a minute to catch up on some I’ve missed.
First up is Doctor Sleep which has the Herculean task of not only adapting a pretty beefy King book but also acting as both a follow-up to Kubrick’s film and the original novel (which if you aren’t aware deviated significantly from one another in several ways). The results are a little mixed but overall decent. MacGregor is solid as the adult Danny Torrance but the real find from an acting standpoint here is Kyliegh Curran as the young telepath that gets dragged into this whole mess. Additionally Mike Flannagan’s direction is as on point as ever and given what he’s trying to do, I think the results are about as good as can be expected. There were a few parts that felt a little unnecessary thrown in more as fan service than anything that actually moved the narrative forward (yep, the good ol’ blood gushing out the elevator makes an appearance). There was one aspect of the ending of the book that Kubrick’s adaptation didn’t use but that this one comes back to which I actually found to be a pretty clever element to put in, and honestly I’m not sure a straight adaptation of the book would’ve fared as well. In typical Kingian fashion, it has things that I think just wouldn’t adapt that well visually.
Mercy is a very loosely adapted version of King’s story “Gramma” (which has been made into a few different short films over the years) and I think probably the first time it has been stretched out into a full-length feature. And man do the seams show… They’ve obviously padded the hell out of this one, adding a whole backstory and urban legend element that wasn’t in the story at all. The film manages to generate a few eerie sequences but just collapses in on itself into silliness by the end. Not recommended unless you just want to watch every King adaptation.
Desperation was a fun King book that has quite a few references to the Dark Tower series if you’re into that kind of thing. One thing I will give Mick Garris credit for is that he is quite faithful to the general tone of the book as well as much of the actual story as well. The movie also has a very good cast, especially with Ron Perlman as the deranged sheriff. I think this movie does reinforce one of the main problems I have with several of Mick Garris’ films though. On a technical level, he’s an able director who has a firm grasp of shot composition and does some interesting, creative things with the camera. But he doesn’t seem to build his films to the budget given which ends up making them look cheap because he overreaches on effects shots (for a good example of this, check out the mine sequence at the end here) and his frequent work in television tends to subconsciously sand off some of the rough edges and grit that his films may otherwise need at times. Still, this I think is one of Garris’ better films just because I like the twisted source material itself and Ron Perlman is awesome sauce.
October 20: I Hate Myself: Harakiri Gore Flicks
190. Onna harakiri: seisan a.k.a. Female Harakiri: Celebration (1990)
191. Shiro-shôzoku: harakiri a.k.a. White Clothing: Harakiri (1990)
192. Cold Night: Bloodless Edition (1990)
Sigh… Why do I keep watching these? There’s no reason to review these separately. They are all basically the same. A young girl walks into a room (in Celebration she’s a nurse and in the other two she seems to be just a regular woman in modest attire). She disrobes and prepares the knife, wrapping the blade as well as her lower abdomen. She then proceeds to caress her stomach for at least a good 15 to 20 minutes. Then in the knife goes. Out comes the blood. She usually pulls out some intestine and writhes around on the floor a little while until dead. The end. Seriously, who are these for? Hardcore gore hounds are going to get bored long before it actually gets to the murder itself (and Cold Night goes a step further and doesn’t even have any blood so it doesn’t even deliver that basic thrill for those folks). The general horror fan is going to be turned off by the total lack of plot and the sheer repetitiveness of these movies. Perhaps there is a very, very specific niche that just finds girls disemboweling themselves in ritual suicide fascinating… Probably the most interesting thing in this whole batch is that Cold Night has an interview with the actress at the end, and she actually goes into some of the history of the practice and why she feels it’s relevant to modern day audiences. Which is certainly more than I got from the filmmakers themselves.
October 21: KIDDIE KORNER!
193. Mickey Mouse Clubhouse – Mickey’s Treat (2006)
It depresses me to no end that my kids seemed to like this boring garbage more than nearly anything else I’ve shown them this month.
October 22: Eating Problems Double Feature
194. Swallow (2019)
195. Umezu Kazuo: Kyôfu gekijô – Zesshoku a.k.a. Kazuo Umezu’s Horror Theater: Diet (2005)
First in our eating disorder double feature we’ve got the film Swallow which follows a pregnant housewife who begins to eat unconventional items as a means of coping with the suffocating environment she finds herself in. While there is indeed a visceral horror element in just watching her swallow items like a push pin, the real horror is the oppressive familial structure that her husband and father-in-law put her in, forcing her to see a therapist who divulges to them everything she talks about and confining her to the home with a strange live-in Serbian male nurse. Haley Bennett in the lead role does a great job of conveying that internal desperation that she is forced to mask with a cheerful veneer, and the film very much is in the same sub-genre of women forced into psychological trauma by an oppressive society as other recent movies like the Invisible Man.
Diet is about a shy girl who’s infatuated with a boy at her school who seems nice to her but makes fun of her behind her back. One day she looks in the mirror and suddenly she looks fat which leads her to become obsessed with her image and start vomiting to make herself look normal again. This one actually worked pretty well (better than the Kiyoshi Kurosawa film released in the same series actually) partially due to its more psychological aspects rather than relying on visual effects. There’s a twist at the beginning of the third act that’s pretty predictable and is revealed in a hacky kind of way but the climax I think goes a long way in making up for it.
October 22: Singapore Horror Double Feature
196. The Maid (2005)
197. 23:59 (2011)
For some reason the Tartan Extreme DVD of this film claims The Maid is Singapore’s first horror movie, which isn’t even close to being true (they were making horror movies back in the ’50s). It is probably the first one to capitalize off the J-horror boom of the early ’00s in the US though. Although comparing it to some of the bargain basement J-horror is doing it a bit of a disservice. It does do a solid job of building the character of the maid and while it has its share of wayward spirits being creepy, it is much more of a slow burn than many of the jump scare factories that it was being marketed along with. It’s a decent film but definitely seems hampered by its budget at times.
23:59 takes the fairly uncommon approach of having a horror film take place on a military base and does have pretty good production values. Unfortunately, by about the halfway point, the plot had started to devolve into nonsense with REVELATIONS that didn’t really explain things adequately. I can’t really recommend this one. It’s just too much of a mess.
October 22: Paranormal Activity Sequel Double Feature
198. Paranormal Activity 4 (2012)
199. Paranormal Activity: The Marked Ones (2014)
I had honestly planned to watch Ghost Dimension too but after two of these, I just didn’t feel like messing with it anymore. Part 4 basically calls back to the events from the end of the second movie and then rehashes the same tropes from the first three but adding a social media Skype component. It’s all very predictable at this point, and other than the Skype it really doesn’t try anything different.
The Marked Ones starts off actually feeling a little different from the previous entries. Rather than the usual suburban family, we get basically some frat bro type guys. I mean, I said it was different, not better. Of course, in tried and true PA fashion, the second half of the film starts bending over backwards to tie into the series’ overarching nonsense plotline involving a coven of witches cultivating demon-possessed children or some junk like that. These movies just wear me out.
October 22: KIDDIE KORNER!
200. R.L. Stine’s Monsterville: The Cabinet of Souls (2015)
Eh, another R.L. Stine franchise property and one I wasn’t familiar with, apparently Monsterville is aimed at the same teen demographic as stuff like High School Musical and definitely has a Something Wicked This Way Comes fused with the Jonas Brothers vibe or something. It’s not good, and it didn’t even come close to holding my kids’ attention.