31 Days of Halloween movies, 2017

[Vegan Daddy]

A wonderfully creepy movie. I usually watch that once a year.

Yeah, disarmingly creepy for a 60s movie. Also the kids are pretty funny. "You're a damned dirty minded hag!"

I'll be watching Carnival of Souls(1962) tonight.

[Za Waldo]

I really do no get the love Carnival of Souls gets from some corners of movie fandom. It's so damn boring, and it's pretty badly acted by almost everyone in it

[Jared]

I don't think I've seen any of the Child's Play/Chuck movies in their entirety. Even as a kid, I just couldn't take a doll seriously as a threat. "Just kick him!"

I probably won't rewatch it because I just saw it a month ago, but anyone looking for a really dark movie to watch, I'll recommend The Void. Think Hellraiser II by way of H.P. Lovecraft, with special effects from The Thing. Some of the acting is a real let down, though.

[Za Waldo]

I don't think I've seen any of the Child's Play/Chuck movies in their entirety. Even as a kid, I just couldn't take a doll seriously as a threat. "Just kick him!"

I probably won't rewatch it because I just saw it a month ago, but anyone looking for a really dark movie to watch, I'll recommend The Void. Think Hellraiser II by way of H.P. Lovecraft, with special effects from The Thing. Some of the acting is a real let down, though.

I wouldn't say The Void has much of anything to do with Lovecraft. It's quite clear their point of reference with that movie is the works of John Carpenter, (specifically stuff like Assault on Precinct 13, In the Mouth of Madness, Price of Darkness, and The Thing; and just generally with the music) Clive Barker, (Notable the first two Hellraisers & Lord of Illusions) House by the Cemetery, some Cronenberg stuff, and Salem's Lot and probably Phantasm 2 with regard to the two guys tracking the monsters. When if first watched it I lot maybe it was just a coincidence that the ritual the drug addict talked about sounded a whole hell of a lot like the ritual you see in Devilman that created Devilman...after seeing Manborg I'm guessing it wasn't a coincidence. The weirdest similarity I noticed with The Void and another movie though, and I brought this up with a friend that really liked The Void, (I didn't) was that one of its big inspirations seems to be the Gene Hackman Hugh Grant mid-'90s horror thriller whatever the hell you want to called it movie Extreme Measures.

It's like Lovecraft twice removed, with any residual Lovecraftiness coming from them being inspired by someone inspired by Lovecraft. But I wouldn't call that being like Lovecraft.

I thought The Void was...I don't think I'd really call it bad, but it's also not really worth watching. It's made up of all these different parts, and the thing with The Void is that time you'd spend watching it would be better spent watching any one of those much better movies. Constantly reminding you of the better movies you could be watching is not really the best of things for a movie to do, and that's mostly all The Void did for me.


Actually, I say the weirdest influence might be Extreme Measures, but then there's also that A Force of One poster and trailer:



I am saying all this about The Void, but so watch Manborg

I did think this did what The Void was trying to do way better:

[ZombieHavoc]

I am saying all this about The Void, but so watch Manborg

I haven't watched The Void yet, but I second Manborg. Movie is excellent. Astron 6's The Editor is also brilliant. Beautiful, gory and funny. I wasn't too into Father's Day the one time I saw it. The funny stuff was funny, but the rest of it I wasn't really into.

[Jared]

1. The Return of the Vampire. (1943)
2. The Lost Boys. (1987)
3. Deathgasm. (2015).
4. Little Evil. (2017)
5. The Legend of Sleepy Hollow. (1980)
6. Little Dead Rotting Hood. (2016)
7. The Craft. (1996)
8. . Extraordinary Tales (2013)
9. Room 237 (2012)


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a4h_AmPuB9M

October 8, viewed this animated Edgar Allen Poe anthology on Netflix. A mixed bag, as anthologies often are. My favorite was The Tell-Tale Heart narrated by static-y old recording of Bela Lugosi. The framing scenes and The Fall of the House of Usher have an animation style that looks like a Tim Burton stop motion movie done in CG, I didn't care for the look.

Still can't beat the Simpsons version of The Raven.



https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sJr7TEVvjqw

For October 9, I watched a documentary on Hulu all about The Shining, specifically the various hidden meanings and potential interpretations many believe Kubrick hid into his horror classic. I'd heard something about silly messages about Kubrick admitting he faked the Moon landing, which is amusing but not worth thinking about. But I'll admit that suggested subtext of the movie being about historical genocide, American and a bit of WWII in particular, while seeming dubious to me at first made a lot of sense as it went on. Why would Kubrick add the idea of the hotel being on an "Indian Burial Ground" when that wasn't in the book? There are also interesting things I hadn't noticed, like the internal geography of the hotel being impossible in places, yet done in such at way that it must have been deliberate by a director as meticulous as Kubrick. I had already planned on watching The Shining sometime this month, and now I'm definitely going to.

I didn't like like the way the doc itself was put together. Too much footage is repeated, we never see the speakers, and they're allowed to ramble and pause at times which could have been fixed in editing. And some of what they talk about is just too silly.

[Joker]

Room 237 is dumb. Good lord I hated listening to those people.

Anyway, I skipped last night. I didn't really think anything would follow The Witch very well, so I read some of The Haunting of Hill House. I have The Haunting on my list, I just haven't gotten to it yet. Maybe tonight.

[Za Waldo]

The Indian Burial Ground thing was pretty big around that time, probably started with The Amityville Horror.

[thwhtGuardian]

The Mill at Calder's End

Written and directed by Kevin McTurk
2015, Spirit Cabinet

With a run time of just fourteen minutes this is probably the shortest film you're likely to see on this or any other list of horror films, and man does it use every second of those minutes to create a truly compelling and utterly eerie story. At it's core it's your basic ghost story with an age old familial manner with an ill-defined curse and a new heir who tries to break it, but although simplistic of plot and characterization the world showcased by Mcturk immediately draws you in. Between the set dressings, the lighting, the score, the dark color pallet and the angles of the shots you become fully immersed in a world that feels very real, and very unnerving at times...and the most unique part is that all the actors are marionettes, and not like the Thunderbirds, but fully detailed, artistic puppets which give it an ethereal feel. That other worldly, dream like feel is used best in the creation of the ghost, I love ghosts on film and this was probably the best effect I'v seen done, it's beautiful and creepy at the same time.

[Joker]

Oh nice! I forgot about that. Been wanting to see it... they ran a kickstarter for it, I think?

My favorite was The Tell-Tale Heart narrated by static-y old recording of Bela Lugosi.

The art in that one is based on the art of Alberto Breccia, an Argentinian comic book artist. He's fantastic, so that made that segment even better for me.

[TomServofan]

I really do no get the love Carnival of Souls gets from some corners of movie fandom. It's so damn boring, and it's pretty badly acted by almost everyone in it

How about a remake?

[Sean Whitmore]

[QUOTE=Sean Whitmore;3150519]October 1 - Frankenstein 1970 (1958)
October 2 - Nothing But The Night (1973)
October 3 - Hellraiser (1987)
October 4 - Dead of Night (1945)
October 5 - Alias John Preston (1955) / What We Do in Shadows (2014)
October 6 - Blood From the Mummy's Tomb (1971)
October 7 - Gerald’s Game (2017)
October 8 - Curse of Chucky (2013)
October 9 - Cult of Chucky (2017)
October 10 - The Ghoul (1933)



A fun but ultimately inconsequential litle horror movie from the golden years, thought lost for a long time. Ernest Thesiger plays things relatively straight (compared to his other big roles) as the servant to Boris Karloff’s Egyptologist-turned-resurrected monster, and the two of them are always fun to watch even when the material isn’t the strongest. It’s also nice to see a lesser-used monster, even if the standards of the day keep it from being the full-on flesh-eating variety from mythology.

[Za Waldo]

How about a remake?

I don't think I've ever seen it. And I don't mean just watching the movie, I don't think I ever even saw it at the video store.

[Joker]

1. The Shining.
2. The Woman in Black.
3. The Conjuring.
4.The Conjuring 2.
5. At The Devil's Door.
6. Dog Soldiers.
7. Treehouse of Horror 1.
8. The VVitch.
9. Read The Haunting of Hill House instead of a movie. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

10.The Amityville Horror. (1979)

A classic in many respects. Been a long time since I'd seen it, so it almost felt like the first time. Interesting how many modern films still pull from this one. I haven't seen the 2005 remake, but I read the plot, and of course they over do it and show everything they can. This is a very subtle movie in its horror. It's also a rather slow movie. Movies were just paced differently back then. Pretty interesting watching this again in this day and age and seeing how it does and doesn't hold up with age.

I really loved the use of flies in this. It's not scary, per se, but it's definitely creepy.

[Za Waldo]

Day 10

Had a little cannibal night last night with two cannibal movies. The second one I watched, The Bad Bunch, I wouldnt call a horror movie so it's out; the the first one is, and it's one of the best, maybe the best, horror movie I'd seen in years.

Raw

Not only the best horror film I've seen in years, but right now easily the best movie I've seen this year. This movie was fantastic, and funny; I wasn't expecting it to be as funny as it was, or even funny at all for that matter. It's a cannibal movie, but there are times you could easily see it being a vampire or werewolf film too, just with regards to the way something is shot or the furiosity something is done. This movie feels like it's the movie Neon Demon wishes it was.

The only down note is a reveal at the end you probably know is coming right at the beginning. Then again there's a level of humor to it that makes it hard to call a down note. Still, if this reveal or twist or whatever was meant to be a big surprise, I'd imagine it won't work on that level for a lot of people. Then again maybe it will, so who knows.

Day 7

I watched that movie The Reaping that day, which ended up being the only horror movie I ended up watching that day. This was a pretty average horror flick with an embarrassment of riches when it comes to the production side of things from an era when that was a pretty normal thing for Hollywood horror movies...want to say it was also the end of that era.

Day 8

Pigs
AKA
Daddy's Deadly Darling
AKA
THE 13th Pig - The Bloody Monster (The 13th Pig) or (Pigs)
Aka
A whole bunch of other titles

My favorite title for the movie has to be that third one, which I guess is the French title for the movie. Just the absurdity of that French title makes it fantastic; I mean it's just so long, and it has its French title in it twice along with the English title being in there too. It's a title that almost feels like a joke about movies getting multiple title changes. All three of these are also different cuts of the movie, didn't watch them all, but I did see they all started completely differently.

In hindsight it feels like a proto Texas Chainsaw Massacre, which would come out two years later and also be vastly better. Overall, it's a fairly boring movie, but there are some nice shots here and there, and there's some interesting stuff going on with the editing that I'm not entirely sure was intentional. The cut I watch makes me think maybe it wasn't, the weird more dark comedy intro of Daddy's Deadly Darling makes me think it may have been.

Nothing like that poster is actually seen in the movie. At least in the cut I watched all of.