October HorrorDays 2014

[Bustronaut]

People that don't understand the greatness of Halloweem III are sad.

It is the Aliens to The Wicker Man's Alien. The witch in the title refers to the pagans that were running the Silver Shamrock scheme. I'll grant you that the robot was a bit weird.

[Brian Fowler]

And it's not just some random kid who burns to death. It's Ben Tramer, the boy Laurie had a crush on in the first movie.

[Brian Fowler]

And they didn't go back to Myers the next year, Halloween 4 wasn't until 1988, six years later.

It's also the best of the Halloween sequels.

[Technico Support]

I watch Halloween 3 every year; it's a guilty pleasure and probably wouldn't be so reviled if it wasn't called Halloween 3.  The chick in the movie is bonkers, though.  "Hey, I know I'm mourning and shocked and investigating my dead dad's murder but I really want to fuck."  But I guess that's par for the course with 80s horror chicks.

[Brian Fowler]

Halloween III is... Weird, mostly. But I love that damn jingle.

[Bustronaut]

[J.T.]

Halloween III is... Weird, mostly. But I love that damn jingle.

 

It is an unintentional black comedy with one of the most awesomely stupid world domination schemes ever.

 

You have to admire a movie that has such a "Fuck 'em" attitude about its gaping plot holes.

[Technico Support]

The "how did we get a piece on Stonehenge here" handwave is the best fuck you ever.

[Travis Sheldon]

Halloween II was better in the TV cut, IMO. Except for Ana Alicia's bits. And I do mean that literally.

Halloween III: Season of the Witch was the first Halloween movie I saw in theater at time of release. At first I was so mad that I sat there waiting for a Michael Myers that would never appear.

But years, and multiple viewings, later it has turned into an enjoyable film experience for me.

[nate]

I haven't decided which typo I enjoy most: "Halloowen" or "Halloweem?"

[caley]

People that don't understand the greatness of Halloweem III are sad.

It is the Aliens to The Wicker Man's Alien. The witch in the title refers to the pagans that were running the Silver Shamrock scheme. I'll grant you that the robot was a bit weird.

I don't understand this part.  But I HATED 'The Wicker Man' but absolutely ironically loved the remake of it.

 

I'll grant you the witch-pagans bit, but it should be more of a 'Season of a Pagan' than a 'Season of a Witch'.  I mean witch, rightly or wrongly, is going to conjure up images of evil women with cauldrons casting spells, not scientists working on pieces of stone henge.

 

And it's not just some random kid who burns to death. It's Ben Tramer, the boy Laurie had a crush on in the first movie.

I didn't even catch that! One of the most thrown-away "Whoops, we accidentally killed a kid on to the next thing" deaths I've ever seen.

 

I watch Halloween 3 every year; it's a guilty pleasure and probably wouldn't be so reviled if it wasn't called Halloween 3.  The chick in the movie is bonkers, though.  "Hey, I know I'm mourning and shocked and investigating my dead dad's murder but I really want to fuck."  But I guess that's par for the course with 80s horror chicks.

Not to mention that she just goes along with him on a road trip because he happened to attend her father's funeral.  Or the way they're "covertly" touring the factory and figuring things out and she sees her dad's car and instead of filing it away as information to go over later, runs toward it yelling "THAT'S MY DAD'S CAR!" thereby attracting the attention of all the evil robots hanging around which the guy JUST pointed out to her.

 

Halloween III is... Weird, mostly. But I love that damn jingle.

It was in my head for days afterward.  The opening bears an uncanny resemblance to my ears to 'Dave on Acid' by Trevor Rabin from the 'Hot Rod' soundtrack which, itself, seems to be a re-imagining/rip-off of Tangerine Dream's 'Astral Voyager'.

 

 

Halloween III is... Weird, mostly. But I love that damn jingle.

 

It is an unintentional black comedy with one of the most awesomely stupid world domination schemes ever.

 

You have to admire a movie that has such a "Fuck 'em" attitude about its gaping plot holes.

 

Oh man, it's so true.

During the test where the jingle melts the kid's brain or whatever, I'm willing to allow that, but where do the bugs and snakes come from?  It reminded me of South Park when Kenny would die and his corpse immediately beset by rats.  And during said test, I get that the dad gets bit by a snake, but why does the mom die?  

 

And then when he rescues the girl who turns out to be a robot now so, technically, she's a robot then and by his side as he drops all the tags which kills all the other robots, why doesn't it affect her?!

 

And why does the Stone Henge rock suddenly light up the TVs and fry the bad guy?

 

The "how did we get a piece on Stonehenge here" handwave is the best fuck you ever.

I was sitting there going "Oh, it must be something they'll explain later...even THIS movie wouldn't do that." and then it never comes up again.  "I can't even begin to tell you how we got it here and no one could think of a plausible scenario where we stole a giant rock, shipped it across the ocean and NO ONE NOTICED, so let's move along, shall we?"

 

Halloween II was better in the TV cut, IMO. Except for Ana Alicia's bits. And I do mean that literally.

Halloween III: Season of the Witch was the first Halloween movie I saw in theater at time of release. At first I was so mad that I sat there waiting for a Michael Myers that would never appear.

But years, and multiple viewings, later it has turned into an enjoyable film experience for me.

Not gonna lie, I'm almost definitely going to watch it on TV again next year.

[Curt McGirt]

 

 

I HATED 'The Wicker Man' but absolutely ironically loved the remake of it.

 

 

EDIT: ah fuck it this deserves both photos

 

[Brian Fowler]

You hate The Wicker Man?

This like totally lowers my opinion of you, man.

[piranesi]

{shiver}

 

[caley]

You hate The Wicker Man?

This like totally lowers my opinion of you, man.

I just never got the hype.  I saw it after all the years of hype and went "Meh, give me Nicholas Cage and bees every day of the week instead."

 

Also, I'm amazed my reputation is high enough that anything could lower it! 

[Jiji]

I've been watching at least one Hammer film (or knock off studios like Amicus) a day this month and it has been so awesome. Peter Cushing went from "that guy in Star Wars" to one of my favourites with his passion and dedication regardless of how bad the script may be. That guy is king sized in everything he does and elevates the supporting casts he's been dealt. Mad respeck to Mr. Cushing.

 

The Wicker Man ruled imo. Edward Woodward played an amazing Type A, tightly wound man whose world is built upon the illusion of control and order. It was the perfect movie for the time and I think it's aged really well. To add a bit more, from what I recall, it's a story about the collision of the Cartesian objective reality vs. the pre-modern, pagan in this case, worldview. Fascinating stuff, but then I see most things in that light since reading Heidegger in the summer.

[piranesi]

I wrote up THE CREEPING FLESH last October and Cushing's total commitment to the thing was a big part of what made it work.

[Jiji]

That's on the list but I haven't gotten to it. I've watched the majority of his '50s and '60s horror films and am getting to the point in time where his wife passed and he got incredibly depressed, skinny, and looked to have aged about 15 years. From the few I've seen after that point, the skill and class remain but there's a bit of reservation in that dedication that made him so wonderful to watch.

 

Edit: Checking out last year's thread to find lots of Cushing love, including Jae mentioning one of my favourite moments so far in my viewing experiences:

 

Spoilering the 60-year-old movie gif... just in case!

 

Stunt double or not, I don't know, but Cushing's physical acting is remarkable for his ilk. I'm used to the wooden, awkward Richard Burtons ("don't touch me!"), but Cushing kicks ass, even in his older, gaunt days. Going back to his work as a widower, he said this in an interview shortly after his wife's death: "Since Helen passed on I can't find anything; the heart, quite simply, has gone out of everything. Time is interminable, the loneliness is almost unbearable and the only thing that keeps me going is the knowledge that my dear Helen and I will be reunited again some day. To join Helen is my only ambition. You have my permission to publish that ... really, you know, dear boy, it's all just killing time. Please say that." Jeeeeeeeesus.

 

Edit: Holy shit! Tokyo Drifter reference in the '13 thread! Love that movie!

[Curt McGirt]

Poor Peter. Chris Lee and Vincent Price confirmed that in interviews, they were his closest friends and losing her just crushed him. 

 

I had the rare occasion (to say the least) to see Wicker Man in 35mm last year and it was an experience. That looked like the BIGGEST film I've ever seen, visually. Imagine getting to see something like Ben Hur or Lawrence of Arabia on the big screen -- that's what it felt like. Total immersion. 

 

Speaking of which I also had the pleasure of seeing Candyman on Wednesday night at the Art. Sadly, they got rid of their 35mm and are just running DVDs or streaming off the net now, which led to a showing of The Exorcist being cancelled because they timed out (!). So, Candyman looked like shit. You would think somebody running the co-op would have a copy, or could rent one. They could have borrowed my DVD for chrissakes. Anything's better than streaming. 

 

Watched Blood and Black Lace again last night. Bava's cinematography is just stunning. The primary colors he uses here are practically blinding. The plot is incredibly convoluted but it's best to ignore all those red herrings and the hostile cop and just enjoy the visuals and the quite sadistic murders. Argento wouldn't exist without this movie. 

[jaedmc]

I've got a write up about it coming to SOund on Sight soon, but if you dig Cushing, watch him kick some ass in Brides of Dracula

 

EDIT: Hey it's up http://www.soundonsight.org/hammer-horror-thursdays-brides-of-dracula-in-which-there-are-no-brides-and-no-dracula/

[Jiji]

Brides was rad. It was a really silly script but he was so good in it!

[piranesi]

So everyone has been talking up HALLOWEEN III and I've kind of been rolling my eyes in secret because I haven't watched it in a long time and the last time I even really thought about it was listening to them skewer it on "How did this get made."

But tonight I got to do a fun little experiment.  Not only had I not sat down and watched it in it's original (non t.v.) version for awhile and now had the gorgeous box set blu ray in front of me, but my wife had never seen it.  Never. seen. it.  Now it's one thing for Halloween fans who remember going through the process of being embarrassed by it, hating it , making fun of it, finding the charm in it, developing a soft spot for the goofiness to spin it in a positive light, and then declaring it to be the greatest movie of all time...a complex process...but NONE OF US ARE OBJECTIVE!!!!  We all have our agendas and we're too close to it!

So...wife...loves horror.  Can't get enough 80s slashers.  On a binge.  Her first spin on Season of the Witch.  A funny thing happened.  It was like a little microcosm of the history of the response to it.  In other words her opinion of the movie swung wildly along with the quality of the movie.  It tunrs out the quality of the movie swings wildly from really pretty good to absurdly stupid almost from moment to moment.

At first she was really into it.  The setup had her intrigued...BECAUSE IT'S A GREAT SETUP!!!  The idea of a guy showing up in an E.R. saying "They're going to kill us all!" then being murdered a few hours later by a man in a suit who the lights himself on fire.  That's fantastic!

The whole creepy company town vibe and the sudden arrival of a bunch of outsiders who you know are going to get killed in horrible ways.  Tension increased quite nicely!

The gore scenes are pretty gross if you've never seen them before and she was squirming when that first guy is killed in the hospital.  She freaked at the sales lady in the hotel.  She gasped when the laser went into the lady and yelled and covered her eyes when we see her skull all shattered.  She was adequately grossed out by the shower of blood coming from the hobo's headless corpse.

But...along the way she was making a few snide comments here and there and the weaknesses began to appear.  It was interesting seeing a first-time viewer go through this proces all at once and  fall right into line with a lot of normally pointed-out negatives.  Now, she didn't care at all that it didn't have Michael Myers.  She never even mentioned it while the movie was on and was fully buying into the story for itself.  But the Tom Atkins/Ellie stuff was hard to stomach. When they started basically fucking out of nowhere she laughed out loud and started making fun of Tom Atkins "obvious oozing magnetism that no one can resist."  His hapless attempts to communicate with his ex-wife Annie from Halloween...his bizarre body, which is huge and barrel chested on top and basically Simon Helberg on the bottom...

She shrieked in annoyance at Ellie running to her father's car.  She howled at Tom Atkins wrist-only shot-putting of a rubber mask onto a camera twenty feet away and way above him.  The phrase "Wait..that doesn't...what?" was uttered more than once.

But she was hanging in there.  She was creeped out by the one old robot lady knitting.  Back into it!!!! (note: that is a criminally underrated image of sheer shivery goosebumpy uneasiness).  When Tom Atkins picked up a silver shamrock logo thing she yelled "Don't open it! Laser!!!!"  

But then it all fell apart.  When he was creeping around in the main lair she was twittering at how absurd it is that he's just crawling around on the floor in the open with like 30 robots all not noticing him.  That he somehow knows how to work those weird computers with no letters on them.

Sadly, the bug scene even fell flat.  She was already too busy scrunching up her brain trying to deal with all the plotholes.  When he had his big moment of triumph and dumped all the shamrocks down from the rafters she was too busy trying to put this all together...and I quote: "So, what, because they're all electric?  There's no bugs this time?...Why is the old man turning into cheese?  NONE OF THIS MAKES SENSE!!!"

By the time we're in the car and he's fighting with Ell-bot, all is lost.  And we had made the shift from the first half hour or so when she was like "I can't we didn't watch this one yet.  It's pretty good!" to the end credits:

"Well, what did you think, babe?"
"Uh..it was..okay...Michael Myers is in the next one, right?"

Sad, indeed, no?  And the transformation was complete.  30 years of fanboy reactions, counter-reactions, rehabilitation, and parody all summed up in one person's first viewing.

[Jingus]

I'm a terrible horror fan, I've barely watched anything this year.  (Partly due to having rather more grimness and violence in my real life than I'd like, so watching more of the same is not currently appealing.)  So far it's just been:

 

 

1. half of Patrick Stewart's Macbeth (yes, that play DOES count as horror, you could damn near stage it as a straight-up slasher flick) and unfortunately Jean-Luc Xavier feels like he's kinda going through the motions, and he's got this really distracting mustache, and the supporting cast is kinda sleepy and the semi-artsy not-quite-avant-gade editing feels superfluous and the whole thing looks like it was filmed in a basement.  Duncan's murder is kept offscreen, Lady Macbeth seems more nagging than forceful, and I got bored and stopped watching halfway thru.  (I've still yet to see a really great Lady Macbeth, despite it being supposedly the best female part Shakespeare ever wrote; give me Rosalind or Ophelia any day.)  

 

 

2. Getting to see Predator on the big screen, which was tremendously fun.  Okay, it's really more of an action flick than a horror film, but it's all I got, sorry.  I forgot how relatively long and slowly-paced that movie is, and how slowly it introduces the character, and how much time it takes in and-then-there-were-none-ing the commando team.  I always remember the movie as "helicopter ride into the jungle, find the skinned bodies, bigass firefight, capture a woman, then the Predator kills the living fuck out of everyone except Arnold who spends the rest of the movie fighting the extraterrestrial badass in the best interspecies deathmatch ever".  Which is succinctly accurate, but damn there's a hell of a lot of little character moments and raising-the-tension bits that I keep forgetting, despite having seen the movie dozens of times.  

 

My current favorite moment is now at the end, when the predator quotes back Arnold's question to him: "What... the... hell... are... you?"  It made me realize: the alien warrior is actually a little bit AFRAID of Schwarzenegger.  The Austrian killing machine actually came as a SURPRISE to the star-beast.  I think this Predator has gotten cocky; and why shouldn't he? Everyone in his race is bigger than humans, stronger than humans, can take WAY more punishment than humans, and especially has like a thousand hi-tech gadgets which they essentially use to cheat.  I mean, c'mon: these things hunting a man are like the men who hunt deer, and do so with the best rifles in the world and camoflauged clothing and chemically nullifying their scents and hiding in a tree and putting out some kind of bait, and then claiming it's "sport" to take the easy cheapshot on their oblivious, distracted prey.  Or to use another metaphor, it'd be like a modern military sniper going up against a squad of musket-bearing redcoats; he's got kevlar and hollow points and night vision and those poor dummies sitting around the campfire in their wigs have no chance.  There's no real challenge there, in these David-versus-Goliath situations where David doesn't have a sling and Goliath has a flamethrower.  It's playing a video game in easy mode.  

 

Oh, in theory someone could get lucky and kill the hunter; they are mortal, they bleed.  They carry first aid kits.  But they don't expect to get killed out there.  And when the tables are suddenly turned, when the goddamn Terminator fights back (with crude caveman-like weapons and traps, a nice thematic touch), this one predator is shocked to have been defeated.  It didn't think this was possible.  It's got the arrogance of an alpha male who is so used to getting his way that any other outcome is not something he can even comprehend.  And then he runs into this prey animal that he can't fucking kill, that he has to chase and chase and chase to the point of exhaustion.  And after the hunter loses the trail, the prey has the gall to challenge him to a fight; and then the prey drops a goddamn tree on him and snaps his spine.  Maybe he understands the words that Dutch speaks to him at that point; maybe not.  I like to think he does.  Remember, at the end he's taken off his mask and all his electronic gizmos (like the voice recorder); he's intentionally lowering himself down to Arnold's level.  Breathing unfamiliar, possibly toxic air; barely able to see by infrared, in a world much colder than his home planet.  At this point, the predator is like Quint stabbing Jaws when he's in the shark's mouth.  He's always been the toughest guy in the room, and he is astounded when finally finds a different room which contains Arnold Schwarzenegger.  

 

And he can't stand it.  Predators hate losing.  Because, what happens next?  That's right, he activates that Klingon-looking sub-tactical nuclear time bomb.  While LAUGHING.  Partly in mockery of how Injun Billy, the second-toughest guy in the squad, sounded when he guffawed, yes; remember, the predator totally cheated in that matchup, bringing a gun to a knife-fight.  But mostly laughing in a "Haw, gotcha after all!" manner.  He didn't expect Arnold to be able to outrun the explosion (to be fair, the predator couldn't have watched all those 90s action movies where it seems like outrunning explosions is all anybody ever does) and thought he could at least turn this loss into a draw.  Later sequel and comic lore have suggested that the predators self-destruct in order to keep their technology out of the hands of intelligent races who might be able to exploit it; but I think it's more that they're just such egotistical bastards that they can't even die without leaving a final Fuck You in the shape of a mushroom cloud.  

 

Nondiegetic digression: damn, but John MacTiernan was maybe THE best action director in the world in the 80s.  John Woo and the other Hong Kong boys might've had better individual action setpieces, James Cameron might've been a better overall storyteller, Paul Verhoeven might've had better satire and more brutality, Richard Donner might've been funnier and more humane, Robert Zemeckis might have been more unpredictable and had more talent in incorporating special effects into the story in a natural way, Tony Scott might've been flashier and better at using background music, John Milius might've been better at nailing that "primal testosterone" button, Martin Brest might've been better at managing mismatched buddy characters, Brian De Palma might've had better final boss fights, but nobody else really managed to put ALL that stuff together into the ultimate thrill-ride like McTiernan repeatedly did.  (Well, maybe Spielberg; he's got the Indiana Jones trilogy in that decade, which is tough to beat.  But Spielberg is practically the measuring stick for popular entertainment; even in something like Always, he can create a badass action sequence in which the conflict is Holly Hunter fighting a forest fire via plane full of water.  Let's say he's an exception and doesn't count.)   Certainly nobody was better at playing cat-and-mouse games where the hero has to desperately improvise a way to beat a vastly overpowering opponent.  

 

 

3.Rewatching Predator 2 for the commentaries, which were unfortunately not very good.  The director and the writers get their own separate tracks, but both of 'em are those amateur-hour experiences where the filmmakers spend LONG moments just silently watching their own damn movie.  Thankfully the movie they're watching is Predator fucking 2 and it's almost as much fun as the first one.  We get a lot more comedy, with a heckuva supporting cast: Gary Busey! Bill Paxton! Adam Baldwin!  

 

And in this one, they make the predators look a little more thoughtful and less dickish.  While it's still cheating by being fucking invisible and using all kinds of wacky one-hit-kill weapons, this one seems to try and find more dangerous situations to throw itself into: a shootout between the cops and the mobs, a drug dealer's apartment when one gang is hitting another.  This guy likes to show up at fights already in progress and turn it into a confused three-way-dance.  (Hey, I've been confusing my it/him pronouns for the Predator, haven't I?  Well, shit, someone else should figure out which one applies better.)  And then when it suddenly becomes very clear that the predator's walked into a trap (in a slaughterhouse; they remember that even a hi-tech alien killing machine still needs to eat, a nice touch) he gets pissed off, quickly slaughters the living fuck out of the feds who are trying to capture him.  But damnation, here comes Danny Glover playing Martin Riggs for a change, and the predator finds out exactly what it feels like to have a 12-gauge emptied into its chest.  This one doesn't choose to take its mask off, Glover does that, while the Predator is either playing possum or it got knocked out by the shock from the gunshots and then it quickly wakes up at an inopportune moment.  

 

Although, there is one TREMENDOUSLY dickish moment when the predator is hanging off the side of the building... and activates his self-destruct bomb!  IN THE MIDDLE OF DOWNTOWN LOS ANGELES.  It's made very clear that they would've wasted countless civilians, since the next scene involves them chasing through an adjacent apartment building.  Danny Glover, being the ultimate action hero (he can be a family man, a fighter, a lover, a thinker, a barbarian, anything that any situation needs) says "fuck this, I'm Danny Glover, I never die in action movies" and cuts the Gordian Bomb in half.  At which point, Predator 2 does something different than the first film: the predator runs away!  He cauterizes his arm stump, injects himself with the predator equivalent of adrenalin, and hauls ass to get back to the mothership.  Of course, Danny Fucking Glover doesn't allow a slight to go unavenged, so he chases the predator right the hell down into the metaphorical inferno: a spaceship buried underneath a city.  (How THAT got THERE would be a fascinating short film, wouldn't it?)  The weakened predator has actually become the prey.  He's got one hail-mary left with a razor-net (could he have been trying to capture his unbelievably tough opponent at this point?) but Danny Glover is all like "oh, is this your boomerang-discus-knife?  LEMME GIVE IT BACK TO YA!" and he flat-out fucking kills the predator, which even Arnold didn't get to do in the first one.  

 

Then, whoopsie-daisy TEN FUCKING MORE PREDATORS CRAWL OUT OF THE WOODWORK.  Glover gets to do something here that few action stars do: play a scene where he's totally fucked, period.  Not even Danny Goddamn Glover can take on an entire family reunion of predators at once.  He ain't Godzilla, he's just a Man.  And he's stepped into the very heart of nihilism, like you just stepped off the elevator while sneaking around the Death Star and oh shit there's Darth Vader AND the Emperor standing right there in front of you.  Yet even as he wearily (intelligently?) drops his weapon, Glover is still verbally defiant with the perfect pre-Goldberg one-liner: "Who's next?"  

 

This is when the predators morally redeem themselves a little bit: they take this loss well.  They're all like "It's a fair cop" and just pick up their dead comrade in an honorable fashion and leave.  And the oldest one there, one with grey in his alien dreadlocks, tosses Danny a former trophy: a flintlock pistol from ye olde days.  Clearly these fuckers have been doing this for a long time.  Although, hilariously, they do NOT make it easy for Danny to return; they're like "shit, if this guy is THAT tough, let him find his own damn escape route off this launching rocket-ship".  But at least they didn't try to kill him with a parting shot, which seems to have been the M.O. of the previous predators.  

[jaedmc]

[Jingus]

 

And then when he rescues the girl who turns out to be a robot now so, technically, she's a robot then and by his side as he drops all the tags which kills all the other robots, why doesn't it affect her?!

Do we really need spoiler tags for this kinda stuff in this kinda thread?  Ah well, I'll play along: 

 

That's the plot twist/hole that pissed me off the most in that movie. How/where/when/why did the whole "replace the chick with a robot" deal work?

 

 

 

You hate The Wicker Man?

This like totally lowers my opinion of you, man. 

I just never got the hype.  I saw it after all the years of hype and went "Meh, give me Nicholas Cage and bees every day of the week instead."

 

Also, I'm amazed my reputation is high enough that anything could lower it!  

 

I still haven't seen it, partly because of all the hype and that I already know the ending.  Damn that "Bravo's Top 100 Scariest Moments" TV show, it spoiled the end of SO many horror films, it picked the last scene out of whichever film they were discussing more often than not.  And I don't have any particular low esteem of your reputation, caley; Fat Spanish Waiter is the only one around here that I sigh and shake my head at, although sometimes I even agree with him.