October Horrordays

[Travis Sheldon]

I like the first Yorga movie, don't remember much about the second.

Think Marriet Hartley was in it.

The Deathmaster (1972) was supposed to be a Yorga film, but I think there was some legal trouble hence the name change of Quarry's Yorga to Khorda.

I think Quarry talked about it in the commentary track on the DVD.

[Burgundy LaRue]

Every time I hear Quarry's name, I think of how Vincent Price apparently hated him when they worked on Dr. Phibes Rises Again!

[piranesi]

Started in on things that showed up thanks to hoarding B-day Amazon gift cards and cashing in my "Hey, it's almost my birthday...I can order stupid stuff, right?" card:  

1) The new HALLOWEEN box set
2) last year's FRIDAY THE 13TH box set
3) the CRYSTAL LAKE MEMORIES set

Popped in the 1st disc of F13th, the uncut original.  It looked really great.  The thing that makes that first movie work so well is just how real and ambient all the locations are.  Everything from the small-town diner to the various cabins.  Such great set dressing, I guess is what it's called.  And of course directing that takes a little time to let you drink it all in.

The great moving camera shots that sometimes look like POV shots and sometimes are just there to give it some realism way before that became such an expected thing.  The little bits of POV that keep shifting from counselor's view to "killer's" view to a "fake killer's view" (where the killer isn't there, but we get a POV shot anyway)...it's all just a little disorienting without being overdone and annoying, or even calling attention to itself.

And just the right amount of claustrophobia.  So much of the time the camera moves so freely in big spaces, and then when it suddenly forces you into tight shots, (like when the guy is in the generator room) it really heightens the tension.  I swear most horror movies today has so much in closeup that they miss that change of anxiety-level.

Even after all these years, it got three screams from my wife (Kevin Bacon's death, body crashing through the window, and the Jason-in-the-lake shot).

Watching it this time, maybe because her scenes looked so great in this transfer, it really felt like the story of poor Annie stands out...the girl who never makes it to the camp.  She apparently hitchhiked and backpacked all the way there from who knows where because this was her best shot to actually get real experience working with city kids and she has big plans to be, like a social worker or a teacher or something.  That's pretty amazing that we are able to build that much backstory for her in the minutes she's on screen. 

 

She's the one that hears the story of Camp Blood along with us.  She's the one who hears from crazy Ralph and is warned.  She tells us about how she's following this dream of hers to work with kids.  The actress is so great.  They clearly cast her so that we would think she was the final girl...and even though her story never even crosses the main story, we end up knowing more about this one girl than about any of the other characters.  Since they draw her up so much, and trick us into thinking she's the main person we'll be rooting for, her little section is like a little complete short story prequel to the real movie. 

 

And I feel genuinely sad when she looks up from the ground at her attacker and whimpers "No!" shaking her head...like "This can't be how my journey ends...I'm supposed to do all this stuff I've been planning."  It's like we're seeing what it would look like if the final girl didn't survive, but instead just tripped...and died.  And even she can't accept it.  The only thing that lessens the effect is that we've already met Alice before we go back to Annie.  But, still, none of the other victims feels quite so sad.  Like, she was supposed to be a final girl, in a different movie maybe.  But she accidentally ended up in this one and so she never made it to her movie.

She's also the youngest and most enthusiastic character.  There is something about this genre that is bound to the idea of destroying youth.   It's such a corrupt thing for a story to do, to set loose a force that seems, for whatever reason, to be compelled to find the people farthest from death, the people who are the strongest and fastest and most full of energy and excited plans...who are just coursing with life an emotions and hormones and racing through the world...and slaughtering them...cutting them down and watching them slowly crawl toward their final breath.  

I know this isn't exactly a new observation and they made a big thing about this in A CABIN IN THE WOODS, but the older I get, the more perverse it seems...the more horrific.  It was always sort of there.  Like, say, Mina and Lucy in DRACULA. 

 

In the 19th century popular engravings:

 

 

and even back to the 16th century

 

caution: Renaissance boobs within:

 

 

 

But it was only one part of Victorian (and earlier) horror.  In these movies, it's a main running sort of Jungian theme: the perverse slaughter of the young.  Not children.  That's a different kind of horror:

 

 

But, people at the prime moment of strength...the "Malcolm MacDowell in A CLOCKWORK ORANGE" moment of maximum restless energy and potential to do...good, bad, whatever.  Like, when I was younger I didn't really understand the power of that moment in life.  I was just like "Fuck those other kids HAHA!!!! Get 'em Freddy!!!" 

 

But it's a dark theme.  And every now and again it really stands out how dark it is.  There was scene in HALLOWEEN: H20 where Michael is chasing the sarcastic goth girl.  She was a strong character, in that early 2000s, post-SCREAM smart teenager kind of way.  The new generation of "we've seen it all" horror characters.  And after he wounds her, he just slowly follows her as she crawls across the floor, scraping and clawing hopelessly as her life ebbs.  Every October that movie is on AMC and that scene always makes me cringe a little at that notion of destruction of youth.

 

And now I get the same thing from poor Annie:


RIP, Annie. 

You are causing me an existential crisis.

 

 

Also: Listening to the commentary track, Betsy Palmer is so great...she invented this whole backstory for Pamela Vorhees...and she has the whole fantastic point-of-view "I was a good lady...who went a little wrong..."

[nate]

Every time I hear Quarry's name, I think of how Vincent Price apparently hated him when they worked on Dr. Phibes Rises Again!

I wonder how much that changed when "Madhouse" came around. Granted, Price hated the director tremendously on that one.

[Reed]

 

Not sure what it says about this trailer, but while watching this I spent most of the time trying to figure out where I knew the lead girl from. Then I realized she's Emma in Bates Motel.

[assfax]

Complete good Freddy Discography on Blu Ray for 30 bucks.  Not good enough to get me to bite but,.

[jaedmc]

ooooooo I want that. I love the Nightmare series. Recently went back through it over the last two/three Halloweens with my wife, who's never seen 'em. During the middle of the series it just seemed like Freddy was defeated by just being tired. The fights kind of amounted to 

 

"I say you lose!"

"Ugggggggggh fine, see you in a year."

 

There's some tremendous FX in these movies that I feel still hold up. I'll take this over your fucking Avatar jerkoff bullshit:

 

[piranesi]

Great music too.  Just when F13th was faltering and it's fantastic orchestral soundtracks fell apart into cheap synthesizer junk starting with Part VI, Freddy was bringing the hair ballads and moody synth pop.

[jaedmc]

PARTY AIN'T A ROCKIN

 

UNLESS YOU GOT DOKKEN.

 

 

Fuuuuuuck. I keep having this flashback to those days when I was a wee lad, excited to go to the grocery store with my mom, because I'd spend the whole time at the magazine rack. Comics. GamePros. And more relevantly - FANGORIA. I still remember the issue that showed pics from Greta's death in Part 5, which like the roach motel sequence is still pretty slick.

 

Long live print.

[piranesi]

I think I posted some love for the soundtrack for Part IV last October...I guess in this very thread.  Fucking Vinny Vincent Invasion, Man! 

 

 

 

This is one of those songs where one line ends "The pain makes it so hard to understand."

 

But he sings "The pain makes it so hard to unders... STAHHEEEEHHHEEEAAAHHHEEEAAAAHHHEEAAAAHHHEEAAAHHHEEEAAAAHHHEEEAAAAHHHHNNNNNN!"

 

...and the Fat Boys, one of whom is apparently Freddie's nephew.

[jaedmc]

To me it's the one series(bigger than a trilogy) that I feel is most "rewatchable." I haven't gone back through Halloween - I might do that this year starting with 3(which I haven't seen), but I remember 4 on up being the least interesting horror films. Friday the 13th is solid in parts but it's got a couple of weak sauce stinkers. It's also hurt even more after one watches The Burning, which is probably the peak of Camp Slashers.

 

Then there's Sleepaway Camp which is probably not far behind Back to the Future as "most fun trilogy of films".

[bobholly138]

To me it's the one series(bigger than a trilogy) that I feel is most "rewatchable." I haven't gone back through Halloween - I might do that this year starting with 3(which I haven't seen), but I remember 4 on up being the least interesting horror films. Friday the 13th is solid in parts but it's got a couple of weak sauce stinkers. It's also hurt even more after one watches The Burning, which is probably the peak of Camp Slashers.

 

Then there's Sleepaway Camp which is probably not far behind Back to the Future as "most fun trilogy of films".

But there is 5 Sleepaway Camp films.

[jaedmc]

Those aren't real.

[Brian Fowler]

Halloween 4 is really good. After that, it's gets spotty and sometimes ugly.

[Niners Fan in CT]

I enjoyed H20 and I have mixed feelings about the Zombies.  I thought there was some good stuff in the first Zombie but also some awful stuff. I did not like the 2nd Zombie at all.

 

Also, I have the Sleepaway Camp series on DVD. They are definitely fun but I don't think they're actually good..

[Jingus]

I think I'd like the Nightmare movies a lot more if practically every single one didn't start with Freddy coming back for no adequately explained reason, and then end with some lame "gotcha!" jump-scare which pretty much implied that the movie had a downer ending with everybody dying and Freddy reigning supreme.  Fuck that nWo heel-dominant-forever bullshit.  He's like a villainous version of a Mary Sue; he's too damn powerful, he can do whatever he wants to do, you can't fight him until the script says you can fight him and then he just comes back and wins anyway.  What's the point?  So fucking nihilistic.  And he doesn't even have the fig-leaf excuse of being kinda sympathetic like Jason, Remake Michael, or Leatherface in that "he's a fucked-up retarded manchild who had an awful childhood and his overwhelmingly horrible situation inevitably led to his becoming like this" sort of way.  He's just a child molester who also killed kids, bravo, what a great dude to turn into the charismatic wisecracking antihero of a franchise anchor.  

[jaedmc]

I'm reading what you're saying and I think all that sounds awesome.

 

And yet...something about how you wrote it makes me feel like you don't feel the same.....

[piranesi]

Forget Freddy, Jae.  Watch HALLOWEEN 5 and join TINAtion!!^*

 

 

 

 

 

 

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[bobholly138]

Those aren't real.

How so? Return was even made by the original creator.