October Horrordays

[Jingus]

There's plenty of low-budget black horror that's just so obscure most people never hear of it. I recall a halfway-decent DIY flick titled Hood of the Living Dead which was worth watching, if you're into shot-on-video stuff. Although that one was directed by a pair of Hispanic hermanos, so technically it might not count.

Most black people in horror do indeed fit the "one or two cast members in an ensemble of otherwise mostly-white people, with ofay gringo gaijin filmmakers behind the camera" mold. Although even there, horror was sometimes WAY ahead of the curve: had there been a single other movie before Night of the Living Dead which had a non-white cast member playing the lead role, and their race was never even MENTIONED in the movie? Yeah, it's kind of a technicality since Ben was originally written as a white guy and it's subtly implied that some of Cooper's mistrust of him might have racist origins. But still, damn, for 1968 it's just fucking amazing to have any film with a non-Caucasian protagonist that explicitly ignores their ethnicity at every turn. Had that ever been done before?

[J.T.]

It's too bad that the Yakub mythology hasn't been used by Black film makers to produce a critical, White-as-Other horror film.

 

IMO, Black film makers are too busy trying to get rich on the Tyler Perry formula because relationship movies and romantic comedies sell better to the community.  I've yet to see a Black film maker really focus on making good Afro-centric horror / thriller movies..

 

This is why I am actually pretty stoked for No Good Deed with Taranji P Henson and Idris Elba.  If it does well, then maybe it will be the start of more films of its ilk.

 

 

My granmother used to scare the shit out of me and my siblings by telling us stories about a race of evil creatures called the Biloko that would kidnap us if we didn't do our chores.  Strictly Grimm Fairy Tale type stuff designed to make kids behave, but African folklore is ripe with materiel for a horror movie.

[piranesi]

Googling Biloko I get a pretty satisfying mix of terrifying little gnome creatures with huge teeth, and booty video screencaps.

 

That combo alone should have had this idea greenlit years ago.

[J.T.]

Googling Biloko I get a pretty satisfying mix of terrifying little gnome creatures with huge teeth, and booty video screencaps.

 

That combo alone should have had this idea greenlit years ago.

 

I'd love to see it but movies about tiny evil monsters grow on trees. 

 

Gremlins, Critters, Troll, Ghoulies, Don't Be Afraid Of The Dark, and now The Babadook is on the horizon.

[Jingus]

Thinking about this: horror has traditionally been a different sort of escapism than other genres. That is, in horror films, oftentimes you're NOT supposed to empathize so much with the heroes. Think of all the total idiots in slasher movies who walk off alone into the woods, or the mischievous hooligans whose pranks backfire horribly, or the morons who just had to read that ancient spell-book out loud. It's a genre which is very heavy on the idea of punishment and sin. And who do you want to see punished? Not someone just like you, right?

Disclaimer: I know this is making a HUGE generalization about a massive heterogenous group of different individual people, so let me make it clear I'm speaking about the most subtle of subconscious psychological tendencies and not just spitting out some "dem people are all alike!" ignorance. But I do wonder if in this day & age, many black people might prefer to watch horror films with white actors playing the victims. After all, racism is still unfortunately A Thing That Happens in our society, something the minority has to deal with on an inexcusably frequent basis. Too many white people do still shit on those whose skin has more melanin. It's the status quo, and it's changing but not fast and not enough.

Now, take horror films: a genre which usually delights in making the viewer feel superior to the fictional protagonists. That's kinda rare, isn't it? You don't get that many other places, except in comedies about unbelievably stupid people. Most escapist genre films tend to present us with pretty people who are smart and fit and wealthy and live better lives than we do. We enjoy those great lives by proxy, by imagining ourselves as them. But horror? The empathy screeches to a halt in many cases. You're laughing at them, not with them. All those seminal Universal horror pictures took place Not Here, not in current America, but in some vague old-timey European place. The people in those movies didn't act or talk like any real human being that had ever existed. That trend still continues somewhat to this day; truly identifying with anybody in any Saw movie ever is a level of emotional agony that I'd not want to even consider.

I remember once seeing a Sinbad standup routine where he mocked passive weakling horror protagonists, and made jokes about how Dracula would have to CATCH his sprinting ass before any biting could take place. Or along the same lines, that one bit with the black news team in Scary Movie: "White people are dead, and we gettin' da fuck outta here!" (tires screech) An oppressed minority is not unfamiliar with horror. A kid who grows up in a shitty ghetto has probably been to more funerals than a kid who grows up in a gated suburb. They don't want to see the exact same horrible stuff happening in movies that happens in reality, not the exact same stuff. Most horror movie violence is obviously phony Hollywood bullshit; and most audiences LIKE their violence to remain phony Hollywood bullshit, to a certain extent. Make it too real (think the guy getting slooowly stabbed to death in Saving Private Ryan) and the viewer doesn't achieve the same kind of catharsis from watching bad things happen to someone else.

Hollywood (and American media in general) have always had this sad bias towards adult white Christian males, because that's who always RAN those industries. And artists tend to create art that is about themselves, and businessmen tend to fund art about people who are kinda-but-not-exactly like themselves. Thus, even today, most American films tend to have white male Christian protagonists. Tyler Perry-style niche artists do spring up to fill in the gaps; in this media-savvy day and age, the audience is much more aware of who's behind the camera, and it's harder to get away with blaxploitation movies made by white producers. But despite a small boom in independent films from the black community, the only horror films tend to be direct-to-video midget-budget obscurities which probably never even stream on Netflix. Does a market not exist for black horror? Do too many black people have enough damn suffering in their lives, that they don't want to see black heroes get crucified on a big screen?

[piranesi]

 

Googling Biloko I get a pretty satisfying mix of terrifying little gnome creatures with huge teeth, and booty video screencaps.

 

That combo alone should have had this idea greenlit years ago.

 

I'd love to see it but movies about tiny evil monsters grow on trees. 

 

Gremlins, Critters, Troll, Ghoulies, Don't Be Afraid Of The Dark, and now The Babadook is on the horizon.

 

 

But are any of those things over-running and terrifying Benny Boom's latest video shoot and chewing on a fake Kanye only to be fought off by Anthony Mackie and Nicole Baharie? 

 

You could literally take the first three rows of images that come up on google image for Biloko and call them storyboards and sell this.

[J.T.]

Hmm.  We need to get a script written and get a Kickstarter campaign going.

[Brian Fowler]

DVDVR Films

[J.T.]

@ Jingus.

 

I suppose I see it as an overarching empowerment issue.  I am kinda tired of African-Americans being pigeonholed into certain areas of the entertainment industry, especially by our own people. 

 

I think that we should have a strong presence in all genre of music, not just Hip Hop or Gospel or something, and we should have a more creative input into more than one genre of film, not just comedies or some magazine inspired romantic crap.

 

DVDVR Films

 

Jesus, we have to have some film majors in our brood.

 

Everyone will get a Producer credit.

[piranesi]

I'm still tied up on our Brock Lesnar/Mark Henry/Brodus Clay remake of DISORDERLIES.

 

UPDATE: I've been turned down by everyone, so we're in the phase of production where we are waiting for someone to start a new film studio so we can pitch it to them.  Standby.

[Brian Fowler]

Fuck that we are crowdsourcing our own studio.

[Brian Fowler]

Not a film major, but acting.

[piranesi]

I call dibs on running the Craft Service table and taking kickbacks for serving you assholes sushi made out of industrial slurry and laced with Amphetamines to keep you smiling.

[J.T.]

Executive Producer:  JT

 

This thing could be a thing.

[Brian Fowler]

Executive Producer: Just Trippin'

[J.T.]

Executive Producer: Just Trippin'

 

If there can be such a thing as McG and Oliver Megaton, then I will also go by a psuedonym.

[Burgundy LaRue]

Ultimately, I attribute the lack of African American horror films to AAs having good sense. As Eddie Murphy once put it: once a ghost tells you to get the out the house, get GONE.  No investigations, no trying to reason with the ghost.  Just pack up the car and peel out.  Some whites try to figure what's going on, learn the truth and what not.  Eff that, some evil spirit has called dibs on the house.  Whites stick around.  Blacks say let Casper have it.

 

The same holds true for wild animals beating up folks.  Never seen Bambi or Yogi slap-box a black person, have you?  And you probably won't.

[J.T.]

Watched a double feature of V/H/S 1 and 2 last night while on shift. 

 

The scares are a little hit or miss but the movies are not bad overall.  The seemingly random and gratuitous insertions of female nudity may be off-putting to some viewers.

 

That being said.  Hannah Hughes from V/H/S 2?  Yeah, I'd hit it.

 

I think I may be a little more forgiving than I should be since I love horror anthologies.  I will revisit both movies around Halloween and post reviews to whatever thread we put together.

[J.T.]

Ultimately, I attribute the lack of African American horror films to AAs having good sense. As Eddie Murphy once put it: once a ghost tells you to get the out the house, get GONE.  No investigations, no trying to reason with the ghost.  Just pack up the car and peel out.  Some whites try to figure what's going on, learn the truth and what not.  Eff that, some evil spirit has called dibs on the house.  Whites stick around.  Blacks say let Casper have it.

 

The same holds true for wild animals beating up folks.  Never seen Bambi or Yogi slap-box a black person, have you?  And you probably won't.

 

Now you see, the healthy respect for the unknown is a cultural commonality that we seem to share with some Asians and most Latinos.

 

That being said,  J-Horror put itself on the map with polished versions of Japanese folk tales fine tuned for modern sensibilities.  I think that AA directors and producers could work the same magic using our own traditions as inspiration, provided that there was profit to be made in such ventures. 

 

It won't happen because there is too just much money to be made in replicating the OWN / Tyler Perry / Steve Harvey formula.

[J.T.]

The trailer for V/H/S 3.  Working title is V/H/S: Viral:

 

Spolierized because it is a very red bandy trailer

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pZMebnH0mgA

 

Looks like this will be out sometime around Halloween!

[DEAN]

akashi Shimizu's pre Ju-On shorts, Katasumi and 444-444-4444, are also on the YouTubes.

 

Other stuff I can recommend

 

1. Red Balloon (This movie will not help you get over your fear of clowns.)

2. Doppleganger

3. The Descendent

4. The Closet (Dale Daywalt is one of the better horror short film directors out there.)

5. The Hunt

6. Bedfellows (I am sure you have all seen the .gif file by now)

7. Polydeus (another Daywalt gem based on the Polybius urban legend).

I watched these and your winner is.... Polydeus!  Though I dug all of them.

[New Blood]

I already have my Halloween viewing list ready to go for the most part.  I'm most definitely sure there will be plenty of surprises that I will watch.

 

First time watches:

1. The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad
2. Alucarda
3. American Scary
4. Blood Diner
5. Blood Rage
6. Bloody Birthday
7. CHUD
8. Dead Silence
9. Elvira, Mistress of the Dark
10. The Exorcist 3
11. Fright Night
12. Hocus Pocus
13. House
14. The Howling
15. In the Mouth of Madness
16. The Invisible Maniac
17. Kill Baby Kill
18. The Legend of Boggy Creek
19. Massacre at Central High
20. The Mummy
21. New Year’s Evil
22. Nightmare
23. Oculus
24. Pan’s Labyrinth
25. Paperhouse
26. Phantasm II
27. Prince of Darkness
28. The Psychic
29. Rattlers
30. Revenge of Frankenstein
31. Rock N’ Roll Nightmare
32. Satanico Pandemonium
33. The Shrine
34. Sisters
35. Slaughterhouse Rock
36. Sugar Hill
37. Tales from the Crypt
38. Video Violence

Re-watches:

1. Alligator
2. The Amityville Horror
3. Black Sabbath
4. Black Sunday
5. The Changeling
6. City of the Dead
7. The Conjuring
8. The Curse of Frankenstein
9. Don’t Go in the House
10. Don’t Torture a Duckling
11. Edge of the Axe
12. Evil Dead (remake)
13. The Exorcist
14. The Fog
15. Halloween III: Season of the Witch
16. Hellraiser
17. Horror of Dracula
18. The House by the Cemetery
19. The House of the Devil
20. The House with Laughing Windows
21. Let Sleeping Corpses Lie
22. Martyrs
23. Night of the Living Dead
24. Phantasm
25. Pieces
26. Possession
27. The Prowler
28. Pumpkinhead
29. La Residencia
30. Return of the Living Dead
31. Sledgehammer
32. Suspiria
33. Taste the Blood of Dracula
34. Tenebre
35. The Texas Chainsaw Massacre
36. Tourist Trap
37. Witchfinder General
38. Wolf Creek
39. Young Frankenstein
40. Your Vice is a Locked Room and Only I Have the Key

I plan on starting to watch exclusively a few days after Labor Day.

[Burgundy LaRue]

New Blood is making us all look like slackers!    Fine selection with Kill Baby, Kill!  I need to thank whoever it was that put that one in the Select-a-Movie group a few years ago. It was a great watch. Bava really knew how to add layers to a shot.

 

*Maybe* I'll start getting my DVDs/Blu-rays together over the long weekend.  Lots of stuff I need to watch for the first time.  I've still haven't watched Martyrs.  JT is going to rib me good for that.

[Jingus]

You're all over the genre/era map with your picks in general (which is a universally laudable thing), but you do seem to be hitting up 80s slashers and slasher-ish movies particularly hard (which might not be laudable, but is certainly very very brave and worthy of its own peculiar consideration). Of the first-timers you listed, I give strong props to The Howling, In the Mouth of Madness, and Fright Night; and you didn't specify which version of The Mummy you're watching, there's at least three different major films by that title, but if it's the 1932 version then you're in for a good time. And although I can't say that it's a good movie and keep a straight face, I'm still awfully fond of C.H.U.D.

I've still haven't watched Martyrs.  JT is going to rib me good for that.

I would not rib you; I would however WARN you. This movie... is fucked up. Harsh. And it takes great pleasure in batting you around like a cat with a half-dead mouse, never knowing what to expect or what inexplicable atrocity is gonna come next.

[Burgundy LaRue]

Oh, I know that the movie will likely have me crying in a fetal position after watching it.  It's just that I've put it off.  No reason for that, really.

 

I've watched Inside, Frontier(s), and Eden Lake.  I come to October Horrordays with my big-kid britches pulled up, tough and ready!