The 31 Days of Halloween (movies)

[jessecuster3]

10/1 - Tusk
10/2 - It Follows
10/3 - Housebound
10/4 - As Above, So Below
10/5 - Annabelle
10/6 - The Houses October Built
10/7 - Posession Of Michael King

10/8 - Found. - this is a coming of age story about a lttle boy being picked on, who's older brother is a serial killer. It looks like it was homemade. I was not a big fan of this movie, there were no scares, and the biggest action of the movie happens off screen.

[t hedge coke]

Watching Lily CAT, the 1987 anime movie. Stuffed with riffs on Alien, The Thing, and a whole lot of other early 80s classics, it's firmly horror-action, but the horro aspect isn't downplayed. Anxiety runs high as bunch of people, employees and prisoners, are supposed to go to sleep on a spaceship and go colonize somewhere, but instead, are stuck, freed on the ship, while a multiple murderer under an assumed name stalks about. And spoilers:

it turns out the murderer isn't the killer on the ship, which is a horrible bacteria infecting the title cat, beloved pet of the boss' daughter who's ostensibly running the show but quickly loses all authority and has to forcibly gain it back.

end of spoilers There's some great freaky visuals, but also some surprisingly well-sold emotional moments that provide a different kind of fear from monsters and bloody corpses.

Have you watched the Gingerdead Man series yet? or maybe the Killjoy movies? If it wasn't for my dogged loyalty to Charles Band...

I know what you mean.

Yeah I'll watch anything he produces. I'll never understand why Lloyd Kaufman gets more respect than he does.

I'm biased, probably, having worked on things that Kaufman and Troma helped finance or otherwise supported, but Kaufman is much better at selling himself and his company as independent cinema and the first word in schlock, but he also has things like My Dinner With Andre and Rocky to throw out there to balance out the silliest or least-competent of their releases or productions.

Band, essentially, has low budget movies with small creatures in them, as his brand. Blood Dolls was interesting in some ways, but the dolls, themselves, stick out as just being there to promote a line of dolls.

[t hedge coke]

And, just put on Rob Zombie's Halloween 2. I seriously don't get the apathy or the hate towards this movie, especially from horror fans. Maybe the theatrical cut sucked. To me, it's the second-best Halloween movie and just an utter brutal monster of a horror flick. That Cat Ballou scene is just devastating. That's trauma. That's it's-never-going-to-be-alright-again. Fantastically ugly use of PTSD, survivor's guilt, anxiety, pain and being haunted. And, it's gothic up the wazoo. Wazoo's need more gothic. Our wazoos have become clean, crisp, and full of breast implants and ironic torture. Some goddammed thunder and lightning is welcome.

[Jared]

It isn't Iran, it's an American movie, pretty sure it was shot in California.

You can't actually make a movie like this in Iran, for obvious reasons. But that is where it takes place, albeit in a fictional locale only known as "Bad City." Why did you think everyone spoke Farsi and the cars had clearly non-American plates? Why did all, even the prostitutes, wear hijabs outside?

Fun fact: the junkie dad had a recurring role as a cab driver on How I Met Your Mother.

[jessecuster3]

10/1 - Tusk
10/2 - It Follows
10/3 - Housebound
10/4 - As Above, So Below
10/5 - Annabelle
10/6 - The Houses October Built
10/7 - Posession Of Michael King
10/8 - Found.

10/9 - double feature! The Bay - This is the story of a small town in Maryland on a bay, when some parasite in the water infects and then kills nearly everyone in town. It is semi-found footage in that it is all told through different cameras on the town. the majroity of it is told through a college student tyrying to get into newscasting. The parasite are these small creatures that eat people and fish from the inside out. I really liked it quite a bit, it had some scary bits and you could see how living on the water it would be a part of your everyday life.
The Den - Elizabeth is using a Chatroulette type website to do a study for her college. She comes across a girl being killed, and then the killer starts targeting Eliuizabeth's friends and family. It definitely had a creepiness to it, and was told very well. I really enjoyed it, and would recommend it.

[Jared]

October 1st. 1- The Last House on the Left (1972).
October 2nd. 2- Night of the Living Dead (1968)
October 3rd. 3- You're Next (2011)
October 4th. 4- The Evil Dead (1981)
October 5th. 5- The Dead Zone (1983)
October 6th. 6- Buffy the Vampire Slayer (1992)
October 7th. 7- Evil Dead II (1987)
October 8th. 8- Dracula: Prince of Darkness (1966). 9- A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night (2014)
October 9th. 10- Prom Night (1980)



Vastly inferior Halloween wannabe, complete with the same star, Jamie Lee Curtis. There seems to be an attempt at a twist regarding the killer, but it's pretty obvious from early on. There are a couple attempts at red herrings, but you won't buy them for a second. Disco was definitely still alive when this movie came out. I think a dance sequence had more attention lavished on it than any of the stalking/killing scenes, which is unfortunate. I think if it weren't for the fact that this is another slasher that Curtis starred it, it'd be just be forgotten among the heap of one-and-dones from the era, rather than meriting sequels and remake.

[Sean Whitmore]

10/1 - Hotel Transylvania 2 (2015)
10/2 - The Crawling Hand (1963) (MST3K)
10/3 - Two On A Guillotine (1965)
10/4 - The Crawling Eye (1958) (MST3K)
10/5 - Missed
10/6- Predators (2010)
10/7 - Missed
10/8 - Missed

10/9 - Maniac Cop (1988)

For some reason, this was a movie that kids at school always talked about when I was a kid. I guess it had a lot of TV play back then. I'd always only seen bits and pieces of it, but had no appreciation for slasher flicks at that age, so I never sought it out. Now having seen it...eh, it was okay. Not a particularly memorable killer, no deaths worth writing home about, which seems a real waste of the "killer uniformed policeman" iconography. My man Tom Atkins made it a lot more watchable, as he always does. And seeing a young, slim Bruce Campbell in anything other than an Evil Dead movie was a nice surprise. I don't see myself seeking out the sequels, though.

[simbob4000]

You can't actually make a movie like this in Iran, for obvious reasons. But that is where it takes place, albeit in a fictional locale only known as "Bad City." Why did you think everyone spoke Farsi and the cars had clearly non-American plates? Why did all, even the prostitutes, wear hijabs outside?

Fun fact: the junkie dad had a recurring role as a cab driver on How I Met Your Mother.

I know where the movie takes place within the world of the movie, but this comment:

Though if not for the language and the head-scarfs, you'd hardly know it's Iran, as it could be any Western boom-turned-bust town.

Made it seem like maybe you didn't know it wasn't filmed in America.

[simbob4000]

And, just put on Rob Zombie's Halloween 2. I seriously don't get the apathy or the hate towards this movie, especially from horror fans. Maybe the theatrical cut sucked. To me, it's the second-best Halloween movie and just an utter brutal monster of a horror flick. That Cat Ballou scene is just devastating. That's trauma. That's it's-never-going-to-be-alright-again. Fantastically ugly use of PTSD, survivor's guilt, anxiety, pain and being haunted. And, it's gothic up the wazoo. Wazoo's need more gothic. Our wazoos have become clean, crisp, and full of breast implants and ironic torture. Some goddammed thunder and lightning is welcome.

I loved this movie. Maybe love is a bit strong, but it's really good. The scenes with the girls just hanging out are really good, and seeing a horror movie about characters dealing with having survived a horror movie isn't something you really get to see. And then there's the actually horror stuff, which is great too.

If I was telling how to watch Halloween, I'd say just watch the original, then skip on over to the directors cut of Rob Zombie's Halloween 2.

[Jared]

Made it seem like maybe you didn't know it wasn't filmed in America.

It was filmed in America. Southern California, to be more precise. It's set in a fictionalized Iranian town.

[simbob4000]

It was filmed in America. Southern California, to be more precise. It's set in a fictionalized Iranian town.

I meant Iran. That first post made it seem like you didn't know it wasn't filmed in Iran. I mean, I already said it was filmed in California.

[Siddon]

31 Days of Horror 31 different Filmmakers

pacific_heights_r4ntsc_003.jpg

Pacific Heights is one of those movies that has a better pedigree than legacy. John Schlesinger may not be a name often heard of today but he actually won an Oscar for directing Midnight Cowboy and followed that up with a legendary thriller Marathon Man. In 1990 near the tail end of his career he decided to get into the thriller game and made the movie Pacific Heights. A hit at the time, the films generally been forgotten mostly because unlike most thrillers you don't have a massive body count. Scored by Hans Zimmer, shot by Amir Mokri (Man of Steel) and acted with a series of decent character actors (Michael Keaton, Matthew Modine, Melanie Griffith) the film is a story of a young yuppy couple who buy a house they really can't afford in San Francisco. To pay for the mortgage they rent out two properties attached to the house.

One of those tenants is Michael Keaton, and he's a bad and strange guy. What I like about Pacific Heights is it's a slow build, Keaton never goes over the top. He's a hustler and conman playing a cat and mouse game with two very dumb mice. It's a slow build that slips in some Hitchcockian scenes, their is a great scene with roaches that will turn your stomach. Keaton does a fantastic job in the role, he's charming when he needs to be but he's also very sad, and as the mystery unfolds we slowly figure out why. He's evil and crazy but it's a very realistic evil and crazy

October 1st - John Carpenter - Someone's Watching Me! (1978) **
October 2nd - Brian De Palma - Raising Cain (1992) *1/2
October 3rd - Dario Argento's - Trauma (1993) **
October 4th - Michael Haneke - The White Ribbon (2010) ****
October 5th - John Schlesinger - Pacific Heights (1990) ***

[t hedge coke]

For some reason, this was a movie that kids at school always talked about when I was a kid. I guess it had a lot of TV play back then. I'd always only seen bits and pieces of it, but had no appreciation for slasher flicks at that age, so I never sought it out. Now having seen it...eh, it was okay. Not a particularly memorable killer, no deaths worth writing home about, which seems a real waste of the "killer uniformed policeman" iconography. My man Tom Atkins made it a lot more watchable, as he always does. And seeing a young, slim Bruce Campbell in anything other than an Evil Dead movie was a nice surprise. I don't see myself seeking out the sequels, though.

Maniac Cop is something I find most rewarding when seen with the sequels and friends. They do get bigger, each time, but they're all kind of wasted opportunities.

If I was telling how to watch Halloween, I'd say just watch the original, then skip on over to the directors cut of Rob Zombie's Halloween 2.

Pretty much.

[Siddon]

31 Days 31 Different Filmmakers



Taking a break from the thrillers I decided to tackle a horror-comedy I saw 20 years ago. Sam Raimi's Army of the Darkness, when I watched this film as a teenager after seeing the two evil dead movies I was incredibly disappointed. It was "funny" but not really laugh out loud funny. I suppose I missed most of the jokes, it's better to watch the film again years later. After seeing Bubba Ho-Tep and Drag Me To Hell I can now see the tone Raimi and Campbell were going for.

The movie still have it's flaws, it feels like the cheapest medevil story ever told as Ash gets sent back in time to deal with the Necronomicon. The Deadites and Evil Ash are the badguys and I do wish they would have been a bit more flushed out. The movie has a lot of exposition and characters yet it moves very quickly.

October 1st - John Carpenter - Someone's Watching Me! (1978) **
October 2nd - Brian De Palma - Raising Cain (1992) *1/2
October 3rd - Dario Argento's - Trauma (1993) **
October 4th - Michael Haneke - The White Ribbon (2010) ****
October 5th - John Schlesinger - Pacific Heights (1990) ***
Ocotber 6th - Sam Raimi - Army of Darkness (1992) **1/2

[t hedge coke]

Double post.