31 Nights of Halloween & Horror: 2021!

[Sean Whitmore]

1. Isle of the Dead (1945)
2a. The Vampire Bat (1933)
2b. The Body Snatcher (1945)
3a. The Thing (1982)
3b. The Old Dark House (1932)
3c. Freaked (1993)
4. Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1931)
5. Wishmaster (1997)
6. Jason X (2001)
7. Venom: Let There Be Carnage (2021)
8a. Dracula (Spanish version) (1931)
8b. Count Dracula (1977)
8c. Terror Train (1980)
9. The Plague of the Zombies (1966)
10a. Deadly Friend (1986)
10b. Kiss of the Vampire (1963)
10c. Braindead / Dead Alive (1992)
11. The Deadly Spawn (1983)

12a. Frankenstein Unbound (1990)

Pretty goofy. A Roger Corman movie about a scientist from the future (John Hurt) who travels back into the past with his talking, laser-wielding car, and meets Doctor Frankenstein (Raul Julia) and Mary Shelley (Bridget Fonda). With a cast like that and such a weird premise, I was expecting something pretty memorable, but the pieces never really congealed into anything.


12b. It's Alive (1974)

I'm still relatively new to Larry Cohen's movies, but it's safe to say I'm a fan. This one with the mutant killer baby was not quite as great as Q or The Stuff, but it has maybe the best tagline in movie history:




12c. The Bad Seed (1956)

This is one of those movies where people talk so much about it (and the novel and play it was based on) that you feel like there's no point in even seeing it. But it was good, even if time and imitators have worn down the edge it once had. It's funny to think that this movie was considered so disturbing at the time that they apparently felt the need to include a curtain call (something I don't think I've seen since 1931's The Public Enemy) showing the actresses who play the mother and the daughter laughing and kidding around.

[Moon Ronin]

1. Friday The 13th
2. Friday The 13th, Part II
3. Friday The 13th, Part III
4. Friday The 13th Part IV: The Final Chapter
5. Friday the 13th Part V: A New Beginning
6. Friday the 13th Part VI: Jason Lives
7. Friday the 13th Part VII: The New Blood
8. Friday the 13th Part VIII: Jason Takes Manhattan
9. Jason Goes to Hell: The Final Friday
10. Jason X
11. A Nightmare on Elm Street
12. A Nightmare on Elm Street 2: Freddy's Revenge
13. A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors
14. A Nightmare on Elm Street 4: The Dream Master
15. A Nightmare on Elm Street 5: The Dream Child
16. Freddy's Dead: The Final Nightmare
17. Wes Craven's New Nightmare
18. The Texas Chain Saw Massacre
19. The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2
20. Leatherface: Texas Chainsaw Massacre III
21. Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Next Generation
22. The Texas Chainsaw Massacre
23. The Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning
24. Texas Chainsaw
25. Leatherface (2017)

Guess I'm going with slashers this year... And now the infamous Texas Chainsaw Massacre. I remember as a kid in elementary thinking that it was based off a real story (I didn't learn about Ed Gein until much later). There have been many reboots or what seem like reboots and I totally Viggo Mortensen was in a Chainsaw movie. The one I like the best is the original, and if you have ever read into the the making of this movie its must have been a horror for the actors. the one I like the lest would be Leatherface (2017). Again an origin story that is totally not needed and I in no way want to sympathize with a chainsaw wielding maniac/mass murder.

[Scott Taylor]

Well I have some catching up to do, but I started with the movie "The Bat" from 1959. It was under the horror category on Prime, but really wasn't more than a murder story. The murderer liked to disguise himself in a horrific way and used bats to scare people is all.

[CellarDweller]

1. Halloween (1978)
2. Halloween II (1981)
3. Poltergeist (1982)
4. Ghost Ship
5. The Crazies (2010)
6. The Dead Zone (1983)
7. Thinner (1996)
8. Silver Bullet (1985)
9. Christine (1983)
10. The Shining (1980)
11. Carrie (1976)
12. Scream (1996)
13. Final Destination (2000)


14. Eight Legged Freaks (2002) - The residents of a rural mining town discover that an unfortunate chemical spill has caused hundreds of little spiders to mutate overnight to the size of SUVs. It's up to mining engineer Chris McCormack (David Arquette) and Sheriff Sam Parker (Kari Wuhrer) to mobilize an eclectic group of townspeople into battle against the bloodthirsty eight-legged beasts.

15. Night of the Living Dead (1968) - A disparate group of individuals takes refuge in an abandoned house when corpses begin to leave the graveyard in search of fresh human bodies to devour. The pragmatic Ben (Duane Jones) does his best to control the situation, but when the reanimated bodies surround the house, the other survivors begin to panic. As any semblance of order within the group begins to dissipate, the zombies start to find ways inside -- and one by one, the living humans become the prey of the deceased ones.

[ZuLuLu]

1) 1922 (2017)
2)Gerald's Game (2017)
3) Doctor Sleep (2019)
4) In the Tall Grass (2019)
5)Night of the Living Dead (1968)
6) Things Heard & Seen (2021)
7) Little Monsters (2019)
8) The Dead Don't Die (2019)
9)Escape Room (2019)
10)Escape Room: Tournament of Champions (2021)
11)The Unfamiliar (2020)

12)A Tale of Two Sisters (2003)


South Korean psychological horror-drama film written and directed by Kim Jee-Woon. The film is inspired by a Joseon Dynasty-era folktale entitled Janghwa Hongryeon jeon. After spending time in a mental hospital, a girl is reunited with her sister and returns home to some strange events. More drama than horror, it is a bit slow but creates a moody atmosphere filled with dread and tension but I don't the all the twists and revels works in the end. The wonderful direction and acting make it worth the watch.

13)Polaroid(2019)


American supernatural horror film directed by Lars Klevberg, and based on his 2015 short film of the same name. The film follows high schooler Bird Fitcher, who is given a vintage Polaroid camera that holds dark and mysterious secrets. Not horrible but nothing you have not seen before and not very interesting or entertaining.

[Jared]

October 1st. 1- The Cat and the Canary (1927). 2- Vampyr (1932)
October 2nd. 3- Young Frankenstein (1974)
October 3rd. 4- The Return of the Vampire (1943)
October 4th. 5- Viy (1967)
October 5th. 6- Escape the Undertaker (2021) 7- Terror Train (1980)
October 6th. 7- The Company of Wolves (1984)
October 7th. 8- Gretel & Hansel (2020). 9- Babylon 5: Thirdspace (1998)
October 8th. 10- My Best Friend is a Vampire (1987). 11- The Island of Dr. Moreau (1977)
October 9th. 12- The War of the Worlds (1953). 13- 20 Million Miles to Earth (1957)
October 10th. 14- Kiss of the Vampire (1963)
October 11th. 15- Pale Blood (1990)
October 12th. 16- Apostle (2018). 17- Dracula (Spanish version, 1931)
October 13th. 18- Ghostwatch (1992) 19- Late Phases (2014)



A faux live ghosthunting special that caused quite a stir when it aired (only once!) in Britain. I've heard about it for years so it was nice to finally see it. Obviously I never wondered if it was real, but it's a fun ride without that. I would love to show this to someone who's never heard of it, maybe a bit naive, and to make sure they don't see the very beginning. Tell them it's a bootleg of an old broadcast.



A blind, surly, and stoic Vietnam vet moves into a retirement community and soon finds that a deadly predator menaces the place on the full moon. Think Silver Bullet by way of Logan. I was pleasantly surprised by how good this was.

[Astral Disaster]

42. The Ninth Gate (1999) - An unscrupulous rare book dealer is tasked with authenticating one of three identical volumes allegedly written with the aid of Lucifer and capable of summoning the dark lord. He soon realizes he is being followed and the bodies begin to pile up while he attempts to uncover the secret hidden within the three satanic tomes. Pretty much panned by US critics and audiences upon release, it had a more favorable response internationally. The film does have its issues, a glaring one is in how haphazardly supposedly rare and priceless books are handled, also, a lot of the green screen composite scenes look really cheaply made and bad, despite that I definitely enjoy the film and it's become a Halloween season staple.

43. The Witch (2015) - Subtitled "A New England Folktale", and in a lot of ways it is more that than a horror movie, at least not a horror movie in the typical, contemporary fashion of blood, gore and jump scares, but rather one representative of the time and sensibilities of the period depicted. After being banished from their settlement over religious differences, a family sets up a small farm on the edge of a secluded forrest, they are soon beset by a series of misfortune and death, causing their already tenuous existence on the frontier to grow ever more grim. Is the witch of the woods real or just an imaginary manifestation of the family's religious fervor? Still a recent favorite of mine even after multiple viewings (about 8) over the years since it was released, and personally rank it higher than Eggers' follow-up The Lighthouse.

[Scott Taylor]

Hound of the Baskervilles (1959) - A Hammer film with their usual style and production values from the period, and starring favorite Hammer stars Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee. This is my second favorite version of the story, next to the one starring Basil Rathbone, who is just about the best Homes put on screen. I liked the version of Watson much better in this film than in the older version, though.

[Astral Disaster]

44. Zombi 3 (1988) - Rather disjointed follow-up to Lucio Fulci's Zombi 2. Shot entirely in the Philippines, the movie begins in a biological weapons lab where a serum capable of reanimating the dead (and infect the living), called Death One, has been stolen and inadvertently released into the environment and infecting a number of people at a nearby resort. The military is brought in to quarantine the area, their solution is to kill everyone in the quarantine zone, bury them in mass graves, and cremate the zombie bodies. The airborne ash from the cremation further spreads the infection, exacerbating the situation as the zombie plague threatens to spiral out of control. Meanwhile, a group of the uninfected take refuge at the now ruined resort and attempt to escape the quarantine zone while evading both the undead and the military.

45. Carnival Of Souls (1962) - Low budget b&w film which lies somewhere between art house and horror, the film often has an unsettling, surreal, dreamlike atmosphere which is accentuated by its eerie organ score. After a traumatic car accident, a woman leaves town to take a job as a church organist in Utah. She is haunted by visions of a silent, pale faced man and curiously drawn to an abandoned carnival where she will meet her ultimate fate.

[Conn Seanery]

My List:
1) Maximum Overdrive (1986)
2) No One Gets Out Alive (2021)
3) Pet Sematary (1989)
4) My Heart Can't Beat Unless You Tell It To (2020)
5) Tales From the Darkside: The Movie (1990)
6) It (1990)
7) Graveyard Shift (1990)
8) Misery (1990)
9) Sometimes They Come Back (1991)
10) The Lawnmower Man (1992)



11) The Power (2021). Went into this one with no expectations and really liked it. Very creepy, and the lead (Rose Williams) was fantastic.

Blurb: In early 1970s London, a nurse in training spends her first night at the East London Royal Infirmary during power outages caused by a miners' strike. In the near-total darkness of the old hospital, she is haunted by a supernatural presence, and by her own troubled past growing up in an orphanage.

[Jared]

October 1st. 1- The Cat and the Canary (1927). 2- Vampyr (1932)
October 2nd. 3- Young Frankenstein (1974)
October 3rd. 4- The Return of the Vampire (1943)
October 4th. 5- Viy (1967)
October 5th. 6- Escape the Undertaker (2021) 7- Terror Train (1980)
October 6th. 7- The Company of Wolves (1984)
October 7th. 8- Gretel & Hansel (2020). 9- Babylon 5: Thirdspace (1998)
October 8th. 10- My Best Friend is a Vampire (1987). 11- The Island of Dr. Moreau (1977)
October 9th. 12- The War of the Worlds (1953). 13- 20 Million Miles to Earth (1957)
October 10th. 14- Kiss of the Vampire (1963)
October 11th. 15- Pale Blood (1990)
October 12th. 16- Apostle (2018). 17- Dracula (Spanish version, 1931)
October 13th. 18- Ghostwatch (1992) 19- Late Phases (2014)
October 14th. 20- Ghostbusters (1984) 21- Savageland (2017) 22- House of Black Death (1965)


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fe93CLbHjxQ

The classic tale of three scientists who start their own business and learn that bustin' makes them feel good. Not much too say, everyone knows this one. Ghostbusters: Afterlife comes out in November and I'm cautiously optimistic. From the trailers, it looks like it looks like some old foes may be returning.




A solid faux documentary about a small Arizona border town that was mysteriously massacred overnight. The real cause becomes apparent to the viewer early on even though certain George Romero movies seem never to have existed in the movie's world.
It would work better if the cover story didn't come off as so patently impossible on the face of it. The idea that one man could have wiped out the town and gotten rid of most of the bodies is so absurd that even a dedicated conspiracy among authorities would surely have to come up with something better. Say the whole thing was a cartel hit or something. It would also feel more plausible if it was set no later than the early 2000s, not 2011. Plausibility aside, it's quite well made as you are presented with evidence to piece together in your mind the horror movie that really took place. It's quite dark toward the end, too.




Well, this sucked. I thought the premise and cast sounded promising, but I should have known better from the fact I had never heard or read anything about this before. It's a B-flick cobbled together from unfinished footage. Lon Cheney Jr. and John Carradine never share any screentime. The story is a complete mess, involving a Satanic cult, werewolves, and bikini-clad dancers. I was hoping for a Satanic take on '63sThe Raven, what I got was only a rung or two above Ed Wood. The opening voiceover by Satan, speaking in rhyme, is the only somewhat good part of the movie.
Also known by the title, Blood of the Man Devil.

[Sean Whitmore]

1. Isle of the Dead (1945)
2a. The Vampire Bat (1933)
2b. The Body Snatcher (1945)
3a. The Thing (1982)
3b. The Old Dark House (1932)
3c. Freaked (1993)
4. Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1931)
5. Wishmaster (1997)
6. Jason X (2001)
7. Venom: Let There Be Carnage (2021)
8a. Dracula (Spanish version) (1931)
8b. Count Dracula (1977)
8c. Terror Train (1980)
9. The Plague of the Zombies (1966)
10a. Deadly Friend (1986)
10b. Kiss of the Vampire (1963)
10c. Braindead / Dead Alive (1992)
11. The Deadly Spawn (1983)
12a. Frankenstein Unbound (1990)
12b. It's Alive (1974)
12c. The Bad Seed (1956)

13. Young Frankenstein (1974)

What's left to say about this one. I used to like it just as a comedy, and now I also like it as the clear love letter it is to the Universal horror series.


14. Halloween Kills (2021)



This one, there's more to say.

If you liked the 2018 movie, you're gonna like this one. I am very glad I decided to rewatch the 2018 one right before this; not that there's any danger of losing the "plot" if you don't, but since this one picks up literally minutes later, there are a lot of little things to appreciate if you've got it fresh in your memory.

My thoughts are mixed on it, just because I tend to overthink nonsense like this. As a Halloween sequel specifically, it's great, one of the best. As a slasher horror movie in general, I think it's still very good. It does all the things a slasher film is supposed to do, but doesn't reinvent the wheel doing it.

As a movie-movie, as pretentious as that distinction may sound...it's definitely competent, but too fanservice-y to leave much of an impression when viewed outside of an "another installment in the franchise" lens. Michael Meyers in the 2018 movie was treated like someone who's been killing and escaping death off and on for the past 40 years, not someone who killed 3 teenagers 40 years ago. And this movie REALLY doubles down on that. Every time someone picks up a kitchen knife, it's shot with the importance of someone firing up a lightsaber, and I can't help but think, "That's just what he used in the first movie because it's what he had access to."

The TL;DR version is, I enjoyed it, but I'm predisposed to. If slashers aren't your thing, or even if Meyers specifically doesn't do it for you, there's nothing here I can point at to change your mind.

[babyblob]

I just watched Halloween Kills and I have to say I thought it was one of the dumbest slasher movies ever. I get the whole town is open and there is the whole where will Meyers and no one should feel safe vibe to a "Everyone is being killed and it is pointless vibe." Oh look this person is on screen for 2 seconds and now they are dead. Oh this person said hello to her neighbor and now they are dead. The body count got so high that it became boring. What is the point in listening to what any of the characters have to say when they are killed just two seconds later. It was just person shows up and they are stabbed. Person shows up oh they are stabbed as well. Very meh very boring.

And I love slashers. But damn even Jason and Freddy left a person or 2 alive.

I am going to hit the horror movies hard this weekend. With a Universal Monster Movies this weekend

[Scott Taylor]

The Vampire Happening (1971) - A Hollywood actress inherits a castle, goes to inhabit it for a few days. Finds her grandma is a vampire, is her duplicate twin, and still lives there in a coffin that is kept locked up. So of course the actress immediately insists on unlocking and releasing her vampire grandma and then both of them fall for this one idiot teacher guy who works at the adjacent girl's school. Love triangle! Not really, though, because they are both libertines. After many shenanigans it all ends with a big vampire party, put on by Dracula himself, and they pretty much just get drunk and stuff. But sadly most of them end up getting disintegrated by the sun because the idiot the girls both like turns the big clock in the hall back and fooled the vampires into staying too late at the party. The idiot then thinks the actress was killed by the vampires and ships her back to Los Angeles in a box, not knowing it was really the grandma instead. The grandma takes the place of the actress, her granddaughter, while the actress stays behind to kanoodle the idiot. Oy. This is to horror movies what Barbarella is to scifi movies, if you squint. It was a bit long (thats what she said!) but I liked it. The plot was non-existent but the characters were fun and somewhat nuanced if silly at times.

The director of the movie stated: "I was aware from the start of the difficulties in shooting a horror parody. I really believed that I was working with normal people in the movie industry, and thought I could have made a decent film. With time, I became aware that the producer was an imbecile who treated the project like a home movie. He wanted to do the casting, make cameos in the film, and wanted his wife as an actress. It was a disaster which I can't say anything serious about."

He's wrong. The movie turned out great!

[Jared]

October 1st. 1- The Cat and the Canary (1927). 2- Vampyr (1932)
October 2nd. 3- Young Frankenstein (1974)
October 3rd. 4- The Return of the Vampire (1943)
October 4th. 5- Viy (1967)
October 5th. 6- Escape the Undertaker (2021) 7- Terror Train (1980)
October 6th. 7- The Company of Wolves (1984)
October 7th. 8- Gretel & Hansel (2020). 9- Babylon 5: Thirdspace (1998)
October 8th. 10- My Best Friend is a Vampire (1987). 11- The Island of Dr. Moreau (1977)
October 9th. 12- The War of the Worlds (1953). 13- 20 Million Miles to Earth (1957)
October 10th. 14- Kiss of the Vampire (1963)
October 11th. 15- Pale Blood (1990)
October 12th. 16- Apostle (2018). 17- Dracula (Spanish version, 1931)
October 13th. 18- Ghostwatch (1992) 19- Late Phases (2014)
October 14th. 20- Ghostbusters (1984) 21- Savageland (2017) 22- House of Black Death (1965)
October 15th. 23- It Waits (2005). 24- Within the Woods (1978)



A troubled park ranger finds herself and a few others being stalked by a monster unearthed from a cave. That's pretty much it. Cerina Vincent plays the lead and the quality of her performance is inconsistent. It's generally well made but at times has a made-for-TV feel, particularly with the music. The monster looks reasonably good, but I thought it was very similar to the one from Jeepers Creepers. There's some rather lame exposition delivered in the third act, and some of it doesn't even factor into the movie.



Sam Rami's 30 minute short film prototype for The Evil Dead. Bruce Campbell isn't Ash, but a nerdy guy whose name is Bruce. Instead of reading from an ancient book of magic, the trouble is caused by that old chest nut of "built over an Indian Burial ground". I don't know if there's a cleaned up release available, but the one I saw looks and sounds like it was filmed with a potato. Definitely worth checking out for fans of the franchise.