October Horrordays

[Curt McGirt]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BUQCJAKyhyQ

 

Here's your Halloween treat for the year from me: the whole shebangabang on Youtube!

[piranesi]

Oh, Youtube!

 

HALLOWEEN SHORTS:

 

 

Maybe the first, in fact!

[piranesi]

Some shots from one of my favorite Halloween websites, and a guy who makes absolutely the best Halloween decorations.  Just imagine turning a corner and seeing any of these just sitting in an empty field:

 

spoilered for largeness.  The website is http://www.pumpkinrot.com/pages/Page46.html

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[piranesi]

THE CREEPING FLESH (1973) Peter Cushing! Christopher Lee!!!!!

Literally one of my earliest accessible memories in life is of watching this movie.  How fucked is that?  I couldn't have been more than 3 or 4 years old, as we moved away from that house before I turned 5.  I was spending the night at a friends up the street, and the next day on Saturday this was part of KPLR channel 11 (in St. Louis) Saturday triple feature.  Amazingly, it wasn't an "old" movie at that point, as I would have been watching it in like 1974 or 75 latest.

But I remember precisely two scenes from the movie.  The two that matter.  And I remember that it scared the piss out of me (I think, maybe, literally...I think I actually peed..what? I was a fucking toddler!).

So when I saw this show up on SONY Movie Network, I had to...just had to see what it actually looks like in the colder (and drier) lens of adulthood.  In short, it is magnificent.  The opening credits unfold over the most insane painting I've ever seen.  I can only find two details of it, but the parts you can't see are just as mad and fantastic as what you can see:

This is being painted by Peter Cushing in his lab, which for some reason (that we'll find out at the end) is not really a lab, but a pure white set just wiht a bunch of "lab" stuff scattered about:



This immediately gets you guessing.  Is this a conceptual choice?  Are they deconstructing the Hammer look?  Is this going to be the TOKYO DRIFTER of horror movies?  Did they just run out of money before someone decided they needed a prologue?  Or are they TOTALLY GIVING AWAY THE TWIST ENDING?????? (yes, they are).  Whatever, it was awesome.

So Peter Cushing travels around Africa looking for the origins of Homo Sapiens and bings back a giant humanoid skeleton to study.  It reall is a frightening hulk with a massive ribcage and scary apeish jaws:



Christopher Lee is his mean half brother who runs an asylum and controls the funding of Cushing's experiments and is cutting him off.  Whatever.  This just gives an excuse for some gruesome scenes of late 19th century shock treatment (dude's head hooked up to a sparking wheel/crank thingy)



and some bedlam style shenanigans with the prisoners in the asylum dungeon.  It all looks magnificent.  From Lee's office, to the dungeon room, to Cushing's manor where his delicate daughter is fatefully unaware of her father's experiments.

Lee shows his true face when he murders, with glee and panache, a prisoner attempting to escape.  But the real news is that, as Cushing washes his giant skeleton it begins to grow flesh.  The middle finger where the water touched...gets all fleshy, and he immediately cuts it off.  I remember that part, because that's the big payoff.  Cushing took that fucking monster's finger, and at some point he is going to want it back.

Eventually Cushing decides that this thing contains some "viral evil" and that if he grows its flesh, he can use its blood to create some sort of vaccine against murderous impulses.  He is driven to this ridiculous conclusion by the fact that his wife went mad and died in Lee's asylum, and his daughter is showing symptoms.  So he decides immediately to inject the blood of a primordial Demon into his daughter's veins.  This is a stunningly bad bit of impulsive hypchondria and is the reason I'm glad I don't have access to drugs and WEBMD at the same time.  Cushing LOSES HIS SHIT whenever he thinks of his wife and is clearly unbalanced himself and his brilliant plan immediately turns his daugher into a raving murderess and she kills the shit out of a bunch of people and gets dragged off to the Asylum where her mother died (natch) leading Lee to blackmail Cushing.

But nevermind all that.  Anyone who's seen GREMLINS knows that if you aren't supposed to get something evil wet...you're going to get it wet.  That rule applies equally in Victorian laboratories and on the set of YOU CAN'T DO THAT ON TELEVISION.  Yeah.  that bad boy is going to grow skin and muscle and is going to start tearing people apart.  It leads to a couple of fantastic shots of the shadow of the Creeping Flesh slowly approaching Cushing's house.  Really beautiful.  The other thing I remember from that fateful day in 1975-ish was the final shot.  It haunted me.  Today it seems like a bit of a let-down and really doesn't help clear anything up.  More suitable to the ending of an epsidoe of NIGHT GALLERY than a feature-length film.

This is a well designed and directed film.  The sets are fantastic, if not many in number.  The camera moves a lot to take advantage of all the details and to allow Cushing in particular to pace about and meditate and follow his madness.  Cushing and Lee are actors that look so spectacular in close-up and so magisterial in long shots and director Freddie Francis (who would eventually win a best cinematogaphy Oscar for GLORY) luxuriates in both.  He had previously directed a bunch of Hammer films and this is like a Hammer film made with more money and maybe just with more time to take care over the details.

And the scenes between Lee and Cushing are electric.  


Like you need a reason to watch this other than this.

[jaedmc]

I had to watch that for Fowler's Havoc one year - was that you that picked that?

[Curt McGirt]

Ah, the late, great Freddie Francis. I really need to see that one. Trivia: The Creeping Flesh is actually the next-to-last film from short-lived Hammer/Amicus imitator/competitor Tigon British Film Productions, whos claim to fame is the inimitable Witchfinder General. 

[jaedmc]

Gonna catch y'all up some on my watching, for those that give two turds:

 

DAY 8 of 31: THE BLOB(1958)

I love this movie so much that I wrote about it extensively here: http://jaekrenfrow.blogspot.com/2013/10/what-i-talk-about-when-i-talk-about.html I talk about Steve McQueen not giving a shit, juvenile delinquency pictures, red probaganda, and some shot deconstruction. Let me know what you think, I'm quite proud of it.

 

Or the short version is If you haven't watched it, watch it. It's a lot of fun.

 

DAY 9 of 31: FRIDAY THE 13TH PART 5

What a turd this one is. No real Jason, the killer is quite obvious and all the kills suck the ass. The only good part was Miguel A. Núñez, Jr.showing up to take a dump. No really. That's what he did and it was fun. This movie also falls in a line of slasher flicks that eventually place the kids in an insane asylum. See also DREAM WARRIORS(which does it in superior fashion.)

 

DAY 10 of 31: PARANORMAL ACTIVITY 4 

This suffered from the "put the fucking camera down" syndrome more so than the others. I actually really liked the two teens, and thought they carried the movie quite well. But the story didn't make a ton of sense. Is her brother the kid that was kidnapped from the other flicks? How did he end up in the adoption system. Whatever. 

 

DAY 11 of 31: HELLRAISER

I don't much remember the Hellraiser movies outside of the third one. This one is kinda lame with the acting. The story concept is cool. Also Cenobites to not scare me at all. I think it's because the more they do the less they seem like monsters and more like a comic book super team of questionable morals. Also they just look too creative. I find myself being less scared of the monsters and more impressed with the creative juice that goes into them. Which gets amplified in the next one:

 

DAY 12 of 31 HELLRAISER 2

Also like Friday the 13th 5 and Dream Warriors we put our heroine in an insane asylum. And also like Puppet Master, we turn the bad guys face by explaining their backstory and making them face a Nazi. Despite all this, I still dug it better than the first. Much cooler visuals and the story was vastly more intriguing. Still, this series is kinda weak for something that spawned many many sequels.

 

DAY 13 of 31: EVIL DEAD(remake)

SOOOOOO MUUUUUCH FUUUUUUUN. Such creative gore, I was clapping and hollering the whole time. I would have been that guy in the theatre standing up yelling "AWWWW SHIT YOU CAN HEAR HER SAWING HER FACE OFF" back at the audience. That whole bathroom sequence is brilliant stuff, and I love the FINAL CONFRONTATION. The only thing I didn't like was the opening expository dialogue which was epic in it's shittyness. I mean, really obvious crap. The Nightmare Remake should have seen this one before moving forward because it does a good job of bringing in new story ideas(the intervention concept) while paying homage to set pieces but in their own way(the tree rape scene here is done much better and felt less like a joke of "hey this girl is getting a tree branch in the twat") Loved this.

 

 

More later.

[piranesi]

FAVORITE HORROR MOVIE CLICHES #1: My total fave.

I think my favorite horror movie cliche is the classroom scene.  The scene where we cut to the lead girl sitting in high school or college lecture, and the teacher/prof. is talking about something related to fate or death or demonology or dreams or something that totally thematically spells out the core of the movie.

HALLOWEEN is obviously the paradigm.


 

 

You see, fate caught up with several lives here. No matter what course of action Rollins took, he was destined to his own fate, his own day of reckoning with himself. The idea is that destiny is a very real, concrete thing that every person has to deal with...

But there are so many. Sometimes they use it to drift into a dream sequence for a scare (A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET) but it always starts with the slow pan across the classroom while the teacher drones on.  CANDYMAN had one, I think.  URBAN LEGENDS had one.  Even SILENT HILL 2 managed one.  It's both a great way to show the lead girl detached from the oblivious people around her, and to make us think that all this mumbo-jumbo is somehow a topic of serious research at universities, that all seem to have a "Professor of Death and Mythology" or "Professor of Occult History" or some nonsense.
 

That, of course, would be the only university that would confer a medical degree upon Sam Loomis.  Terrible doctor.  Interesting guy, but terrible, terrible therapist.

[jaedmc]

I love the one in Elm St., but it might be because of the absolutely amazing hallway sequence with Nancy's friend in bloody plastic. There are a couple of awesome elements to the scene. For one, you have visual of Tina in plastic. I especially love the long shot of her getting dragged down the hallway. Long shots always creep me out, even in non horror movies. It's not being able to see the details. Also the scene expands the horror from the bed, which seems like personal turf that you can maybe defend, to the school - a safe zone. Also you get the added embarrassment of waking up in front of your peers screaming. It feels more impersonal and makes you more vulnerable at the same time. 

 

SCREW YOUR PASS

 

[piranesi]

Ha!  I had this all cued up to plop into that post!

 

 

It helps that an empty high school hallway looks a lot like an ampty sanitarium hallway.

[jaedmc]

Highschool...sanitarium...same difference.

[piranesi]

HALLOWEEN SHORTS!!!!!

 

If you like or hate (Hi, that's me!) creepy ventriloquist dummy movies, this HALLOWEEN SHORT! is worth a look.  The ending is a little bit of a letdown, but the mood is great.

[piranesi]

A Halloween-themed "How Did This Get Made"  This may hurt for some of you who love Tommy Atkins as much as I love Tommy Atkins but they are taking on HALLOWEEN III: SEASON OF THE WITCH!

 

http://www.earwolf.com/episode/halloween-iii-season-of-the-witch/

 

 

I haven't listened yet, but Jason Mantzoukas is a lights-out guarantee.

[piranesi]

HALLOWEEN SHORTS!!!!

 

This is really basic and about as simply as you can get.  But it does the trick.  I especially like the perspective in the 2nd to last shot where instead of the characters POV of not knowing what's there, we get to see what's there all happy and waiting and excited:

[Reggie20x6]

DAY 10 of 31: PARANORMAL ACTIVITY 4 

This suffered from the "put the fucking camera down" syndrome more so than the others. I actually really liked the two teens, and thought they carried the movie quite well. But the story didn't make a ton of sense. Is her brother the kid that was kidnapped from the other flicks? How did he end up in the adoption system. Whatever. 

 

I loved watching these when they first came out, but in recent times I've completely turned on the concept.

 

The first movie was on FX last week, and it's really bad.

 

Hold on, honey, I know you're scared, but I gotta film you crying on the couch right now.

 

2:07

[Brian Fowler]

Man, Peter Cushing plays a great mad scientist, if you guys weren't aware.

[Brian Fowler]

Peter Cushing as a mad scientist.  Christopher Lee as a snarling monster, with very limited screen time.  Random actress in a mostly bland role while almost exclusively wearing dresses designed solely to show off her cleavage.  Yup, most be Hammer.

 

In other words, I watched Curse of Frankenstein tonight, and it was god damn great.

[Reggie20x6]

I wish that AMC owned Chiller. For the last couple of weeks it's been nothing but the entire series of 'Halloween', 'Friday the 13th', 'Nightmare on Elm Street' and 'Scream' on AMC. If only the channel that specialized in horror was actually able to show good horror films year-round.

 

How else am I going to get my wife to watch stuff like this if it's not already on when we're flipping around for something to watch?

 

[piranesi]

I wish that AMC owned Chiller. For the last couple of weeks it's been nothing but the entire series of 'Halloween', 'Friday the 13th', 'Nightmare on Elm Street' and 'Scream' on AMC. If only the channel that specialized in horror was actually able to show good horror films year-round.

 

 

HALLOWEEN marathon on AMC means one thing, babies:

 

TINA!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

Screw you all, haters!

 

Also crappy edits and commercials for that Kevin Smith show that is somehow still on.

[Brian Fowler]

Tina, the worst character in slasher movie history?

[piranesi]

You are a monster.

[Brian Fowler]

Oh please, she is universally hated. There is a whole segment in 25 Years of Terror about how she destroys the movie.

[Marty Sugar]

10. The Fly (1986)

Jeff Goldblum is aces in this, and Geena Davis brings forth a solid effort, while John Getz is great as the smarmy ex-boyfriend; and in true David Cronenberg fashion there's a lot of weird-ass visuals and gross stuff to go around.  The story is a little disjointed in parts, but has a pretty damn dramatic finish.  GRADE: B+

 

11. Would You Rather? (2012)

A billion-dollar foundation hosts a dinner party to play the game "Would You Rather?" with dire and disturbing consequences.  The entire cast is a Who's Who of "remember that person from that show?" and is surprisingly fun with some really creepy and tense bits. The actual ending is trite, and there were a few bits that got botched (one player has to slice his eyeball and they neither show it, nor does he really look any worse for wear), but it was a decent little film. GRADE: C

[piranesi]

Creepy shit from decades past:

 

 

 

Moral:  The past is a nightmare that stretches out nearly forever.

[piranesi]

Oh please, she is universally hated. There is a whole segment in 25 Years of Terror about how she destroys the movie.

 

Proof that creators cannot be trusted to understand their own creations.

 

Don't trust them, Fowler.  Open you mind and heart.  Trust your heart! 

 

Your heart tells you that

 

1) structuring the move around the character of Tina was one of the most creative ideas in 80s slasher films and

 

2) the weight of that twist and

 

3) the need to play against 2 1/2 mute counterparts made it one of the most challenging roles to carry off in the history of cinema.

 

And she nailed it, you fool, with all the foolish fearless exuberance that clueless, clumsy, enthusiastic youth has always brought to horror movies.