October HorrorDays 2014

[Lawful Metal]

Put on the Believers last night. Still fucking unnerving as all get out and one of the best villains ever.

[New Blood]

The Top 25 Horror Films since The Shining. Pretty decent list.

http://www.vulture.com/2013/10/25-best-horror-movies-since-the-shining.html

[J.T.]

I can't see your list.  It shows up as an XML error for me.

[S.K.o.S.]

Probably this?

 

http://www.vulture.com/2013/10/25-best-horror-movies-since-the-shining.html

[jaedmc]

It's 2014. Ain't nobody got time for slideshows.

[S.K.o.S.]

Ok the list is in the spoiler.  There are a lot of "you think that's horror?  Really?" picks, and a lack of certain French films, but there are also a couple that I hadn't heard of and sound good.
 

Honorable mention to Shaun of the Dead

 

25. Wolf Creek

24. Poltergeist

23. The Stepfather

22. The Descent

21. Death Proof

20. A Nightmare on Elm Street (the original, obv)

19. Masters of Horror: Homecoming

18. Ravenous

17. Se7en

16. Ringu

15. The Blair Witch Project

14. Day of the Dead

13. Cure

12. Ginger Snaps

11. The Host

10. Videodrome

9. Evil Dead 2

8. John Carpenter's The Thing

7. Re-Animator

6. Blue Velvet

5. Donnie Darko

4. The Fly

3. Audition

2. The Silence of the Lambs

1. Mulholland Drive

 

I'm going on a coffee run now if anyone wants anything else.

[jaedmc]

What a horribly nice and polite person. 

[Brian Fowler]

Please tell me that's not a ranked list.  I have no clue what the order would otherwise mean, but aNoES way down that low?

[piranesi]

No FRIGHT NIGHT = internet rage.

[Curt McGirt]

Death Proof. BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

 

Yeah that list fucking sucks.

[J.T.]

inside isn't on that list nor is Ju-On or NOROI: The Curse?  Seriously?

[Brian Fowler]

Death Proof was pretty damn good.

[Jingus]

Death Proof was the best part of Grindhouse, aside from Rob Zombie's woefully unproduced-as-a-real-film Werewolf Women of the SS ("and Nicolas Cage as Fu Manchu!").  

I can not think of a worse redo of a classic property in recent times.

Prom Night. The Fog. But yeah, the Nightmare remake was pretty lame and a waste of talented actors.

 

And hey, that Youtube video Assfax posted and nobody talked about, was that just the man himself drunkenly rambling about the Freddy franchise?  I agreed with at least half of his comments.  Didn't understand why a lack of moisture on his skin makes Freddy unscary.  

To be fair to Michael Bay (oh god did I really just type that) the Platinum Dunes produced remake/reboots of Texas Chainsaw Massacre and Friday the 13th were both perfectly acceptable.

  

I personally give all the credit to Marcus Nispel and Daniel Pearl, not Bay.

 

Although Pearl is also responsible for the cinematography on AvP:R which is the worst lit major studio film ever, so I guess I just give it all to Marcus Nispel.

The Texas Chainsaw remake was a helluva lot shittier than the perfectly acceptable Friday the 13th. I never understood why everybody loved that, but then everybody hated the recent sequel. What franchise are you guys watching? Can't you tell which one respects the original, and which one clearly doesn't?

Nispel is a hack. The surprisingly good F13 remake is his masterpiece. Everything else is a sliding scale of shit. He did the lousy Conan the Barbarian remake, and a shitty Injuns versus Vikings movie called Pathfinder which apparently nobody saw or remembered, and it was a remake of an Oscar-winning foreign film from the 80s too.

Daniel Pearl seems to be a cinematographer who gives his director exactly what he wants. He made his bones on the original Texas Chainsaw Massacre, and spent the next fifteen years on a variety of cheap exploitation flicks that needed someone competent and low-budget: Zapped!, It's Alive III, Return to Salem's Lot, etc. He even reunited with Tobe Hooper on Invaders from Mars. Then MTV discovered him, and he spent the NEXT fifteen years lighting videos for every top musical artist in the business: Michael Jackson, Rolling Stones, U2, Whitney Houston, Metallica, Britney Spears, Will Smith, the list goes on and on. He only got back into filmmaking when they hired him for the Texas Chainsaw Massacre remake, and then he was suddenly the go-to guy for horror films with some money behind them, although he still did some random side projects; an Australian PG kid's thriller, George Micheal's farewell concert, an indy drama where Charles S. Dutton is a man obsessed with getting Obama elected, etc. His final credit to date was a PBS Christmas special with Rod Stewart, Mary J. Blige, and Ceelo Green, and he hasn't worked in the last two years. I don't know if that's by choice, or if the industry just forgot about him.

Anybody could've looked up the same stuff I did. Do your homework and don't make assumptions.

 

Ok the list is in the spoiler.  There are a lot of "you think that's horror?  Really?" picks, and a lack of certain French films, but there are also a couple that I hadn't heard of and sound good.

  

19. Masters of Horror: Homecoming

I've got minor grumblings with a few of their choices and misses, but THAT one stuck out like a white guy on a Tokyo sidewalk.  Of ALL the Masters of Horror episodes they could've chosen (Cigarette Burns, motherfuckers! John Carpenter bringing it like he did back in the day!), why THAT one?  It's my pick for the worst episode in the entire first season, a scareless and overwhelmingly pandering tale of dead army soldiers who rise from their graves to vote against President George W. Bush's re-election.  SHENANIGANS~!

Also, I just caught The Dead 2 and highly recommend it to everyone, great new zombie movie, like one of the best in years. For everyone tired of everyone doing zombies and usually making them suck, trust me, this one gets it right. Under the Skin also might technically qualify as a horror flick, and I highly recommend it to anyone who's willing to put up with a lot of hard thinking and pretentious, abstract visuals and editing in order to repeatedly see every single inch of ScarJo's naked body in motion. By the end of this film, you'll be sick of seeing her nekkid; it's creepy like that.

[Curt McGirt]

I hate hate hated that movie but we've already spoken on this. What I want to know is where is Dead Ringers. Or the original Evil Dead. Or The Devil's Rejects. Or Hellraiser. Or Texas Chainsaw 2. Or Exorcist III. Or Creepshow. Or... sorry, I'll stop now.

[Brian Fowler]

Texas Chainsaw 2 is hopefully somewhere around 5,000 on the master list.

[Brian Fowler]

Funny thing:  I did look up Pearl, which is where I found out he did Requiem and withdrew my praise for him.

 

I already knew that Nispel had done Pathfinder and Conan, and not much else.  He still would have been a much better choice for Nightmare.

[Curt McGirt]

Texas Chainsaw 2 is hopefully somewhere around 5,000 on the master list.

 

Texas Chainsaw 2 is fucking awesome. Booooooooo

 

This brings to mind, if they're putting Re-Animator on there they might as well throw on Return of the Living Dead and Dead Alive. (and Texas Chainsaw 2)

[piranesi]

We bring you another installment of GREAT OR ACCEPTABLE HALLOWEEN DISPLAYS WHAT WE FOUND IN THE STORE

 

This fine evening is Guinness BeerCo. Inc. with their display entitled:

 

"BEER GOGGLES OF....DEEEEAAAAAATTTTHHHHH"

 

 

The best part about this is that they bought that same fake skeleton and bag of cobwebs that you guys all did! And then put it in a cardboard coffin with some plastic ravens!!!

 

He/She appears to be either summoning something from the depths of Hell or saying "What?  I wuzzzn' botherin' no one. Oh Yeah? You're drunk!!! I'm fine! GIMETHEKEYS!!! GIMETHEKEYS IMFINE!!!  Designated ASSHOLE MRE LIKE!!!  I shoulda gone to Elviras Millers Lites party.  Jerks."

[Reed]

See No Evil 2: This is basically what happens when two arty horror directors are tasked with doing a sequel to a rather bland and unimaginative film franchise. I'll give the Soska Sisters credit: They try. And while it isn't a patch on American Mary, it's way better than the first one. It's got its own vision, whereas the original was just checking off a list of horror movie cliches.

 

Also, I think Katharine Isabelle's character was meant to be a clever Cabin in the Woods-style spoof of every hot, but really stupid girl in a horror movie. Taunt the body of a "dead" deranged superhuman psycho in a morgue? Hey, why not? She even fell down all the time too.

[S.K.o.S.]

Oops, wrong thread.

[Brian Fowler]

I had no clue Katherine Isabelle was in it.

I was perfectly fine with the first one. Certainly not notably good, but fine.

[piranesi]

Our family Jack-O-Lanterns for HALLOWEEN 2014!!!

 

 

 

 

 

The one on the left is modeled on a Jack that shows up in HALLOWEEN 6: THE CURSE OF MICHAEL MYERS.

The one on the right was an aborted Jack Skellington attempt.

The one in the middle is that way because my wrists were tired.

 

These were carved while avoiding RAW in favor of HALLOWEEN 5: THE REVENGE OF MICHAEL MYERS.

 

You know what that means.

 

MY PUMPKIN LIKE THIIIIIIIISSSS BIG!!!!!!

 

 

The following astute and articulate comment was found on a HALLOWEEN fan wiki:

 

I liked Tina she was funny but Im sad that she dead but it was a good thing to sacarafic her life for jarmie.

2 days ago by A Wikia contributor

 

WE ARE GRWOING. OUR TIME ISNOW!!!

 

#TINATION!!!!

#SCREWYOUFOWLER

#NEVERREASONABLEIFICANHELPITTEEHEETEEHEE

[Jingus]

I had no clue Katherine Isabelle was in it.

I was perfectly fine with the first one. Certainly not notably good, but fine.

Danielle Harris, too.

The first See No Evil was a fairly generic, pretty standard slasher flick. Mediocre; not good, not terrible. It at least had a couple of swerves I didn't see coming. But I'm curious how they tried to justify having a sequel anyway, since the finish of the original movie seemed to explicitly state that Jacob Goodnight was dead deaddeaddead DEAD without any biological possibility of resuscitation. Like, "even further than the end of Halloween 2" for-real-this-time dead. They did everything but cut off his head and cremate the body.

[FluffSnackwell]

How in the world does anybody figure TC3D respects the original when it pretends the original movie featured a trailer park full of trash instead of just the three deranged idiots? Not just that but it remakes the fact that Leatherface was originally a big dumb bullied attack dog for his brothers while TC3D changes it to the Sawyer Trailer Park covering up for one big dangerous retard. How in the fuck is that respecting the original?
 

 

Don't even get me started on the big dumb idiot's redemption. What the hell is that even supposed to lead to anyways? I mean I'd rather see 65-year old one-armed Leatherface from the remakes get a sequel than what the end of TC3D implied.

[Jingus]

Trailer park?  The extended family wasn't living there, they were just a bunch of relatives that the cannibals called in for backup when the shit hit the fan.  It might be a bit of a stretch, but I don't see why it's supposed to be impossible.  They certainly don't change how Leatherface is treated by his family; they're still chastising him for not doing good enough and causing their problems.  And the scene included Bill Mosely and Gunnar Hansen among the family (along with Marilyn Burns in a later cameo) and the DVD includes commentary tracks with those folks and Tobe Hooper all raving about how much they loved the new film, and even had the same guy from the original reprising the role of Grandpa (still holding his hammer).  They rebuilt the ENTIRE original house from scratch, down to the smallest detail.  They had the body of the trucker (the guy who came to the rescue at the end of the original) hanging up in the kitchen, explaining what happened to that dude.  And they even managed to get the original chainsaw itself back to, well, play itself.  Hell yes, that is a HUGE amount of respect.  

 

And he wasn't "redeemed", at all.  He's still the same guy.  He just found a new family member to take orders from.  Where could it lead?  A hundred different places.  (Scott Eastwood's character still has some unresolved issues, for one.)  Way more places than the remake could have; how the hell do you even start a chainsaw with only one arm, let alone wield it effectively?  (And no, Ash's chainsaw-hand doesn't count, he wasn't missing an entire arm.)