OctoBOOr 25th: Attack the Block, dir. Joe Cornish, 2011 (United Kingdom). 4.5/5 pumpkins.

“This is too much madness to explain in one text!”

This just might be my favorite genre film of the past ten years. It really does everything right – sympathetic, believable characters; a smartly-written script that’s alternately hilarious and horrifying (it’s not afraid to dispatch underage protagonists); terrifically acted; an original and intriguing creature design; a fully-realized world; satisfyingly pulpy yet with a social message that’s never too maudlin or overbearing; a kick-ass score by the one dude from Basement Jaxx. Part stoner comedy, part John Carpenteresque “heroes under siege in an enclosed space” alien invasion film, Attack the Block wears a lot of hats and covers a lot of ground for such a short, low-budget film. It stands up to many repeat viewings, with or without the aid of pot, mostly due to the strength of the cast; it’s no small feat to have a cast of relatively unknown actors who are each able to sketch out their roles to such a fully realized degree. They’re each recognizable, relatable individuals, which makes the mostly character-based jokes funnier, and the tragic moments land a lot harder. I hope this one still gets screenings at midnight festivals years from now.  

OctoBOOr 24th: Rosemary’s Baby, dir. Roman Polanski, 1968 (United States). 5/5 pumpkins.

“He has his father’s eyes.”

I don’t know if there’s anything original I can say about this one. It’s the birth of modern horror, alongside Night of the Living Dead. While they’re both great films, only one of them is still scary; all apologies to George Romero. I think the most frightening thing in this film is the appearance of Rosemary herself. Mia Farrow’s a slip of a thing normally, but after she gets that pixie haircut and is in the downward slope of her pregnancy, she looks downright wraithlike. The black dress, the bags under her sunken eyes…you buy her mental and physical breakdown completely. If there’s a misstep in the film, it’s showing the actual rape of Rosemary by Satan. I suppose it’s handled well enough – it’s a genuinely upsetting sequence – but tips the hand a bit too early. You’re always firmly on the side of Rosemary being quite sane and the plot against her being real, but would that be the case if you hadn’t seen demon hands caressing her (with subsequent scratch marks the next morning)? It’s firmly established that her husband is a grade-a creep (man is John Cassavetes good – it’s equally rewarding to read the film as patriarchal fears of impotence), so it’d be completely plausible that he raped her while she slept. Introducing ambiguity to the proceedings would have made for an even more powerful film, I think. But here I am nitpicking one of the best films ever, full stop. And Komeda’s score might be my favorite of any horror film. Hermann’s Psycho theme is more iconic, but Komeda’s working in several shades of grey here.

OctoBOOr 23rd: XTRO, dir. Harry Bromley Davenport, 1982 (United Kingdom). 0.5/5 pumpkins.

“…”

I should be thankful for XTRO. I got quite a bit accomplished while watching it: checked my e-mail – both personal and work, wrote a blurb or two for the blog, gchatted with some friends, went and heated up some Pop-Tarts…it’s too bad that being engaged by it wasn’t one of them. If the previous night’s selection, Sleepy Hollow, proved how vital the British studio Hammer was to horror, XTRO goes to show how far the state of horror across the pond was after Hammer stopped producing films in the early ‘70s. It lacks any character development, discernible plot, subtlety, or class – the film’s only claim to fame are its admittedly gross special effects, including an alien proboscis rape and a full-grown man being birthed by the unlucky rapee. There’s absolutely no verve to the direction, the dialogue is stale and the acting even more so, and the soundtrack is grating in the extreme. Future Bond girl Maryam d'Abo gets naked, so if you spent an early adolescence oogling her in The Living Daylights, that’s a treat. The film takes a decidedly surreal turn around the climax, which is incomprehensible and signifies nothing, but at least provides a break from the constantly bland shots of a pasty English kid manipulating toys with his mind. I’m doubly disappointed by this one, because XTRO was one of those VHS covers I longingly gazed at as a kid, wanting to rent but forbidden to do so by the parents. I should have known they had my best interests at heart all along.

OctoBOOr 22nd: Sleepy Hollow, dir. Tim Burton, 1999 (United States). 3.5/5 pumpkins. 

“This is most irregular, Constable."

 

Another Tim Burton film during the marathon, another comfort food movie. It sounds like I might be damning Sleepy Hollow with faint praise, but that’s certainly not my intention. While the crooked plot cooked up by the cabal at the film’s center might be needlessly complicated, and it’s oftentimes content to coast on its admittedly lavish set design, Tim Burton’s love letter to the Hammer horror films of the ‘60s and ‘70s has considerable charms. First and foremost amongst these is the set design. Burton and his team went out of their way to duplicate the atmospheric, surreal feeling many of those soundstage-only British productions featured, and they wildly succeeded. Being a production with a much higher budget, there’s more actual outside shooting than you’d find in a film with Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee, but many of the most evocative shots (such as our first glimpse at the Van Tassel manor, or the entirety of the western woods scenes) are composed using forced perspective and soundstages; worlds constructed entirely for the purpose of casting an otherworldly pall over the proceedings. The decision to utilize CGI in the film seems incongruous, but the use is, thankfully, sparse. The film practically drips with classic horror visuals from that most venerable of production companies: fog-laden hayfields, blood with the unnatural color and consistency of latex paint, ornate gothic interiors, and British character actors crowding the frame. Which brings me to Sleepy Hollow’s second triumph – casting. It’s a joy watching Michael Gambon, Richard Griffiths, Ian McDiarmid, and Michael Gough slap on the 18th century duds and engage in all sorts of nefarious activities, to say nothing of Christopher Lee’s memorable cameo, framed in the shot with menacing wings sprouting from his sides. Christopher Walken hams it up to the extent that even though his face is probably on-screen for all of two minutes, he’s created an indelible image. Johnny Depp ties it all together in one of his last wonderful performances before he “went full retard.” He’s alternatingly fey, manic, cowardly, and pompous, yet keeping it in reign enough to create a sympathetic, believable comic character, caught between the superstitions and folklore of the old world and the burgeoning Industrial Revolution and reason on the other. A thoroughly modern man in the middle of a deliciously old-fashioned film. 

 

OctoBOOr 21st: Trick ‘r Treat, dir. Michael Dougherty, 2007 (United States). 3.5/5 pumpkins.
“Happy Halloween!” “Screw you!”

 

After a flood of horror anthologies in the ‘80s and early ‘90s (Creepshow and its sequel, Twilight Zone: The Movie, Cat’s Eye, Tales from the Darkside, Nightmares, John Carpenter’s Body Bags), the tide trickled to almost nothing in the mid-‘90s through the early aughts (I suppose there was Tales from the Hood, but nobody looks back on that one with fondness). The genre has shown signs of life as of late, however. The past few years have brought us Chillerama, The ABC’s of Death, V/H/S and its sequel, and one could make the case for I Sell the Dead being an anthology. Unfortunately, none of those films can lay claim to living up to the reputation of Creepshow, and certainly not of the best the ‘60s and ‘70s could offer up, such as Twice-Told Tales or The House that Dripped Blood. In fact, Chillerama and V/H/S are downright execrable, and The ABC’s of Death was a mixed bag, at best. Let us praise Trick ‘r Treat for being a minor miracle, then. It’s not an unalloyed triumph, but it hits most of the right notes, captures the spirit of the holiday, contains varied storylines, and all its segments entwine together in a cobweb of connections. If there’s a fault to be found with it, it’s one of inconsistent tone; unsure of whether to go for all-out laughs or genuine horror, Trick ‘r Treat presents a blend that at times doesn’t push far enough in either direction. It’s a wonderfully cast film, with Dylan Baker, Brian Cox, and Anna Paquin all turning in fine performances. Baker’s segment in particular, concerning a murderous school principal, is a black humor-laden delight that largely rests on his shoulders, the only blemish I can find with it being that some of the tension-filled moments are clearly artificially inserted for a “Will he?” moment, and work not at all upon repeat viewings. (I’m still bummed we’ll never get to see Baker, as the Lizard, face off against Spider-man.) Paquin’s story is slow in the going, and the jokes here fall particularly flat (you won’t even get most of them until a second viewing, to boot), but the payoff is quite worth it. That said, even when the story drags, the film never looks less than splendid, cast in rich orange hues and shades of black. It’s not exactly a very filmic-looking piece of work (the middle segment in particular looks and feels like a particularly nasty episode of Are You Afraid of the Dark?), but works nonetheless. Unceremoniously dumped straight to video by a studio who didn’t know what they had, the film seems to have happily developed its own little cult in the subsequent years. More of this, please. 

 

OctoBOOr 20th: Dog Soldiers, dir. Neil Marshall, 2002 (United Kingdom). 2.5/5 pumpkins. 

“I'm still not convinced these things didn't just escape from the local nut-house and forget to shave or trim their nails.”

Pity the werewolf. He’s been saddled with sub-par films for years now. You could count on one hand the number of truly great (or at least enjoyably pulp) lycanthrope films released over the years. The debut effort from Neil Marshall aims high, but ultimately falls very short of entering the pantheon. The plot very much resembles that of 1981’s Southern Comfort, where a routine training mission in the middle of nowhere (bayou country for Comfort, the Scottish highlands here) quickly spirals out of control when the team encounters hostile locals, with both films eventually ending up in claustrophobic environs. Marshall’s follow-up film to this – and the one his reputation deservedly rests on – The Descent, was very much a film about female empowerment, which makes the sausage-fest of this film feel oddly out of place. To be sure, Marshall makes outwardly “guy” films, but the lone female character in this film is oddly inserted and ends up only confusing and muddling the plot. The plot promises more than it can realistically deliver, parceling out bits of intrigue that never add up to anything, and the revelations leading directly to the climax inspire reactions of “Huh?” rather than anything approaching satisfaction. The acting is usually strong enough (it’s a shame Christopher Eccleston was too old to play a private, because the lead role was basically written for him), dialogue consists of mostly standard guys-ribbing-on-each-other quips, and most of the werewolves themselves seem to have been done practically instead of being CG creations, which garners a lot of goodwill. That said, Marshall clearly has the training wheels on this time out – the noose-tightening command of suspense and the suffocating claustrophobia that characterized The Descent are sorely lacking here, and his action setpieces are nowhere near as well-orchestrated as future efforts such as Centurion or Game of Thrones. It’s a long way from here to the Battle of Blackwater.

OctoBOOr 19th: Razorback, dir. Russell Mulcahy, 1984 (Australia). 3/5 pumpkins. 

“There’s something about blasting the shit out of a razorback that brightens up my whole day.” 

A mid-80s movie about a giant, killer pig terrorizing the Australian outback would seem to be the stuff of utter schlock, right? Razorback is a classier film than a capsule synopsis would suggest, however, and is a fine, sturdy entry into the sub-genre of eco-conscious killer animal thrillers (think of the superb – and superbly campy – Alligator from 1980). Razorback takes its time to establish sympathetic characters with real, believable motivations (the two human antagonists being an overly cartoonish exception to this) and isn’t afraid to upend expectations and conventions. The plot concerns an old hunter who has a personal vendetta against the titular hog, a crusading journalist investigating animal cruelty in a backwater kangaroo processing plant, and a couple of yahoos (not serious) up to no good. It’s a sharply edited film, full of jarring jump cuts and transitions. Mulcahy makes the most of his outback setting – his lens captures landscapes of devastating beauty, foreboding isolation, and sinister eeriness, especially during the nighttime scenes, which look like they could have been shot on an uninviting alien world. A scene where our hero is stranded alone in the desert after spoiling a ‘roo hunt, with only the creepy kookaburra calls to break the dead silence, is more frightening than any of the razorback attacks. Mulcahy is judicious with his “money shots,” as well, never revealing too much of his creature. Whether this was an artistic decision, or special effects budget limitations, it was the right call.

OctoBOOr 18th: Bram Stoker’s Dracula, dir. Francis Ford Coppola, 1992 (United States). 4/5 pumpkins. 

“Yeah, she was in great pain! Then we cut off her head, and drove a stake through her heart, and burned it, and then she found peace.”

I’m not sure it’s possible for me to be objective about this film, seeing as how it was one of the first R-rated films I was allowed to see, and my first viewing of it was on a Halloween night, no less. Not as iconic as Browning’s take on the tale, nor as “pure” or critically popular as Murnau’s Nosferatu, Coppola’s take remains the most faithful to the book in spirit, tone, and plot and is my favorite overall. It even nods to the book’s construction as a series of journal entries, diary confessionals, and recorded medical musings. Everyone loves to rag on Keanu Reeves’ performance here, but I’d counter that he’s actually note-perfect. If you want to delve into the novel’s/film’s themes of sexual deviance, then Jonathan Harker represents the staid, vanilla, and secure. Thus, Reeves’ wooden and proper take is entirely appropriate, and the contrast is never more evident than in the first act, watching him robotically stumble about whilst Gary Oldman’s Dracula slinks, slithers, and stalks around him wraith-like, both physically and conversationally. Oldman’s Dracula is the obvious stand-out performance and he brings the necessary pathos that nearly every other actor seems to pass over in favor of pure monstrosity – the Count is a tragic figure and Oldman understands this; you can feel the centuries-old heartache gradually sap away at him, even as his outward vitality and vigor increases. Anthony Hopkins is at his scenery-chewing best as Van Helsing, and Tom Waits is both hilarious and stomach-churning as the pitiable Renfield. Operatic in scope, Coppola’s Dracula is a feast of garish colors, ornate sets, and larger-than-life performances.

October 17th: Basket Case, dir. Frank Henenlotter, 1982 (United States). 2.5/5 pumpkins.
"What's in the basket? Easter eggs?"


I’ve always been a big fan of Brain Damage but have managed to avoid seeing anything else from Frank Henenlotter prior to this viewing last week. I love how this film really captures all the filth and grime of New York City circa the late ‘70s/'80s. For as slick as Maniac is, this is equally grungy – just check out that doctor’s office with the rusted pipes and flaking paint in the background, or the protagonist’s flop-house dwelling really is that, and not an antiseptic set. The natural layer of filth on everything, combined with the eccentric cast of supporting characters, is really the reason to see this one. The assorted freaks and oddballs that constantly gather outside of the hotel room door when Belial starts throwing temper tantrums are equally as amusing as the silly stop-motion puppet. Suitably trashy and gross. 

OctoBOOr 16th: Maniac, dir. Franck Khalfoun, 2012 (France/United States). 4/5 pumpkins.
“You should see the other picture I was about to send.”



I really, really love the new wave of French horror. Given that, I should have expected this to be such an unflinching, brutal bit of nastiness but was somehow still caught off guard. I’ve always thought Elijah Wood does creepy better than anything else, and that’s on full display here - think of his role in Sin City and you've got a close approximation. It’s not a novel observation at this point, but this film really is Drive with the violence turned up to 11. High-gloss cinematography, sleazy electronic score, hyper-stylized gore and alternating moments of quiet intensity and shocking bursts of violence. I thought the POV conceit worked quite well, even if they do cheat at times, pulling out to showcase a grand guignol tableaux or two. I take grim pleasure in the fact that it’s so unrelentingly bleak (again, I expected nothing less given modern French horror). There’s only two moments of levity in the entire film, both in the first act; one being a wink-wink nod to the original film, and the other that truly wicked “Goodbye Horses” aural joke. I do wish Alex Aja would so some more original properties, though. At this point, I believe the last non-remake thing he did was ‘P2’ in 2007. As much as I thought his piss-take on Piranha was a worthy pile of shits, guts, and giggles, it'd be nice to see an original vision in the vein of High Tension from him. 

OctoBOOr 15th: The Fog, dir. John Carpenter, 1980 (United States). 4/5 pumpkins.
“We were aided by an unearthly fog that rolled in, as if Heaven-sent, although God had no part in our actions tonight.”


 
I had watched The Fog once, years ago and before I really knew the ins and outs of the horror genre. I remember it left me cold, much like the chilling phenomenon that envelops the town in this film. Apparently, I was a stupid teenager. The problem with most ghost films is they’re incredibly susceptible to the cheap and easy jump scare; who needs to waste time building tension and atmosphere when you can just shout “Boo!”, right? John Carpenter, however, is a master of capturing the inevitable and inexorable—we see the ghosts in the frame as they slowly approach our protagonists, we know they’re massing outside the church where they’ve taken refuge, and we can clearly see the bank of fog – moving like a specter itself – rapidly sweeping in, an uncanny harbinger of vengeance. The film’s extended climax is an uninterrupted, almost unbearable 7-minute sequence of creeping danger, as Carpenter’s score – all icy electronic arpeggios - ratchets up the suspense as our heroes are boxed in on all sides. There’s no giant chase or action-packed confrontation; Carpenter understands that less is more. Witness heroine Adrienne Barbeau in the lighthouse, hearing the metallic banging on the door echoing up through the tower, or the resignation one can hear in every syllable that falls from Hal Holbrook’s troubled priest’s mouth. Carpenter has constructed this film with the fastidiousness of a watchmaker; not an ounce of fat as far as subplots or extraneous characters, a ruthless economy in camera moves and editing trickery, no reliance on the jump scare or gore/sex…just a century-old mystery that unfolds to our ever-growing dread. A class act if ever there was one. Halloween gets all the attention – and deservedly so – but its younger sibling is in need of love, too.

OctoBOOr 14th: Bad Milo!, dir. Jacob Vaughan, 2013 (United States). 2/5 pumpkins.
“It’s a metaphor!”

I went into a film about a polyp monster living in Ken Marino’s ass with expectations that were too high, in hindsight. To be fair, I had my reasons: just look at the cast. Marino, Peter Stormare, Patrick Warburton, Stephen Root…this film is packing serious comedic talent. That they are squandered in such a limp fart joke of a film is a real crime. The story is simple: extreme stress causes Marino to develop an oddly cute polyp demon, who represents his subconscious desires/animosities, discovers a whole new and delicious world outside of the lower intestine, and things progress as you might imagine. Marino is a real trooper throughout, entertaining as the beleaguered sad sack, but while he’s capable of lugging little Milo around up his ass, he can’t carry the film by himself. I was all set to relay piercing, intelligent analysis of this film’s Oedipal and Freudian subtext, until the film goes and makes everything as explicit as possible; way to steal my thunder, Milo. I could have spent a couple extra minutes whilst writing this to whip up a few poop puns, but then I’d much rather just flush this film from my memory. Okay, maybe one pun.

OctoBOOr 13th: Beetlejuice, dir. Tim Burton, 1988 (United States). 4/5 pumpkins.
“I'm not scared of sheets. Are you gross under there? Are you Night of the Living Dead under there? Like all bloody veins and pus?”


 
I needed something a bit more lighthearted after the past few days, and nothing fits that bill more perfectly than Beetlejuice. While it’s not strictly a horror movie, Tim Burton traffics in all the usual trappings and clichés of the genre, lovingly and excitingly offering up each new ghastly gem like Delia with the Betelgeuse head at the film’s end. It’s also a bit sad to watch these days, given Burton’s slow but sure descent into lead-footedness, predictability, and unintentional self-parody (Frankenweenie, another love letter to the horror genre, is a very notable exception). The banter and conceptions of the afterlife are witty and fresh (especially the idea of life after death being an endless bureaucratic nightmare), the effects are charmingly low-rent, Burton’s stock cast is able and game, and Winona Ryder was the stuff of a thousand teenage dreams for a certified #sadboy spinning Cure and Joy Division records alone in his room. It’s pure fluff – a lime-green ball of cotton candy shot through with chocolate spiders and topped with blood-red raspberry syrup. But then, what’s Halloween without the candy?

OctoBOOr 12th: Messiah of Evil, dir. Willard Huyck & Gloria Katz, 1973 (United States). 4/5 pumpkins.
“They're coming here. They're waiting at the edge of the city. They're peering around buildings at night, and they're waiting.”

Messiah of Evil is oddly poetic, for being such an unrelentingly bleak and haunting film. On paper, it seems straightforward: a woman travels to a cloistered seaside town in search of her missing father, encountering odd locals and uncovering long-hidden secrets. Everything about the film is designed to confuse, however, right from the film’s two seemingly unconnected starts, down to its false climax. It’s a mash-up of highly stylized Italian giallo films, crossed with the then-nascent, more visceral horror of films such as Night of the Living Dead. The film’s look varies from solitary figures surrounded by nothing but the black of night to garish color splashed across the scene (quite literally so in the film’s false climax). Dialogue is sparse and elliptical. It’s a meditation on isolation and alienation, as the film’s first act amply demonstrates – nearly every scene is either a figure by themselves, or 3 people at most speaking in stilted chopped sentences. Every protagonist is an island unto themselves – the estranged father/daughter, the aloof aristocrat and his constantly-at-odds traveling companions – and all of them are even further removed from the townspeople. Of particular note is the use of music during the film’s horrific peaks, wherein the directors purposefully utilize cues that do not match the on-screen action, throwing the viewer off-balance. Wagner in the truck, jazzy muzak in the supermarket attack, the incidental noises and barroom piano in the theater scene (this one scene alone could provide reams of analysis, as our victim is eviscerated by the audience members directly in front of the screen, making us viewers implicit in her demise); all serve to highlight the not-quite-right atmosphere of the film. While the film it is most often compared to is Carnival of Souls, I was struck by the similarities to Lovecraft’s short story, “The Shadow Over Innsmouth.” A protagonist who returns to an ancestral coastal town, curiously devoid of inhabitants and the normal routines of life; a canary in the coalmine of a drunk, who the evil forces had previously taken as harmless; a century-old legend of a harbinger of evil who disappears into the sea; themes of degeneracy and that of being less-than-human; the inability to escape one’s own past (and therefore, future): all are accounted for here in this inspiring tone poem of a film.

OctoBOOr 11th: La Chiesa/The Church, dir. Michele Soavi, 1989 (Italy). 3/5 pumpkins. 
“Why isn't anybody doing anything to get me out of here?”



Is The Church a surreal meditation on the evils men will do in the name of religion? A haunting Eurocentric take on genocide and the ghastly cost of burying the past? Or, given its origins as an intended third installment in the Demons series, just a slightly more artistic take on its goop-and-guts laden predecessors? The suitably operatic score by such luminaries as Keith Emerson, Phillip Glass, and Goblin would argue for the former interpretation; the plain fact that the film really doesn’t have any coherent through-line once all’s said and done makes the latter a more convincing reading. Still, first-time director Michele Soavi does his level best to impart a sense of stateliness and dignity to the proceedings. After the film’s initial burst of ultraviolence, in which a group of 12th century Knights Templar massacres an entire village for the crime of devil worship, Soavi slows down the pace to a deliberate slow-burn, allowing his protagonists to be ever-more shrouded in the detective mystery of the titular church’s origins and growing dread. Once the evil (or just wronged innocents out for revenge?) are unleashed, Soavi engages in an orgy of surrealistic dream sequences and increasingly out-there kills, culminating in a coupling that Rosemary’s Baby would only glance at sideways. There’s a suitably gothic atmosphere drenching everything, but the problem really seems that Soavi is held in check by the otherwise straightforward narrative. A looser plot and greater degree of creative freedom in the future allowed Soavi to truly craft some impressive, impressionistic horror in Cemetery Man, his real opus.

OctoBOOr 10th: Frankenstein, dir. James Whale, 1931 (United States). 5/5 pumpkins. 
“Have you never wanted to look beyond the clouds and the stars, or to know what causes the trees to bud? And what changes the darkness into light? But if you talk like that, people call you crazy. Well, if I could discover just one of these things, what eternity is, for example, I wouldn't care if they did think I was crazy.”



If Dracula is the art house film of Universal’s original run of monster films, then Frankenstein is the crowd-pleasing blockbuster. That’s far from saying it’s dumbed down, however – if anything, it improves on what Dracula does well and throws in a few extras to sweeten the pot. The pacing is more taught and the film’s forward momentum moves at a breakneck pace; the acting is across-the-board fantastic; dialogue is snappier, deeper, and provides both philosophical monologues and well-placed moments of levity; special effects are more seamlessly integrated, etc. The set design is even more impressive; Victor Frankenstein’s mill/laboratory is absolutely stunning. Sharp angles and extreme blocks (seemingly anticipating Brutalist architecture over two decades early) run headlong into staircases warped in rounded, funhouse mirror shapes; it’s as if Frankenstein’s fractured, obsessed mind has been given concrete, external form. Which, of course, is the entire point of his experiment. In the end, he’s literally carried away by his own imagination. The Promethean myth is a perennial trope in horror and science fiction, and it has yet to find a more clarion voice than in this film.

OctoBOOr 9th: La Maschera del Demonio/The Mask of Satan/Black Sunday, dir. Mario Bava, 1960 (Italy). 5/5 pumpkins. 
“You have no reason to fear the dead. They sleep very soundly.”



Black Sunday (the film’s American title, although I prefer the pulpy, more direct translation) is a lurid, wicked phantasmagoria; an unflinching shadowplay of gothic horror. Unbelievably Mario Bava’s debut feature, the film demonstrates his supreme, preternatural command of craft and manipulation of mood. It is resolutely unflinching in its portrayal of violence and sexuality, quite shockingly so, given the timeframe. If the British Hammer films of the late ‘50s and ‘60s wear their artificiality on their sleeve, Black Sunday positively revels in this. I’m pretty sure every single scene is done in a soundstage, providing a surreal, cloistered atmosphere that’s palpable in every frame – the omnipresent fog smothering the landscape threatens to choke out any and all good feelings. The plot, which is taught and free of extraneous fat, concerns the centuries-old promise of a witch to gain revenge on her own family. It’s almost secondary, however, to the feast of visual delights on display – a baleful Barbara Steele, draped in ebony and lying prostrate in her tomb, beckoning the weak-willed with burning, manic eyes; her vampiric lover stalking the corridors of the ancestral castle, flames dancing off his deformed face… Bava is absolutely drunk on filmmaking here, and the result is a searing fairytale that is nailed into your brain as surely as the titular mask is affixed to our antagonists’ faces in the prologue.

OctoBOOr 8th: Insidious, dir. James Wan, 2010 (United States). 3/5 pumpkins. 
“I don't think bad wiring is the problem here.”



Just so we have all biases up front: I’m not a fan of James Wan. We have him to blame for the execrable and seemingly never-ending series of Saw films from the aughts, and I’m still attempting to see what the fuss was about The Conjuring. Now that we have that admission out of the way, this is by far the most impressed I’ve ever been with Wan. Insidious marries what I did enjoy about The Conjuring (deliberate pacing, slow and twisting camera pans, solid acting, an utter lack of fake scares) with a far more compelling story. Poltergeist is the obvious antecedent for the story, although Wan does play slightly with the formula. Unfortunately, some of those attempts at originality fall flat – Poltergeist studiously refused to give us a concrete glimpse of the netherworld, whereas Wan spends the bulk of his third act wandering around the “Further.” It’s what you don’t show us that’s infinitely scarier and despite some nice set design, this vision of the afterlife is distressingly, well, wan. Storywise, the film’s impact is also blunted by the complete disappearance in the back half of the Lambert family’s children, who are so crucial to engendering sympathy in the film’s beginning. The baby daughter, in particular, acts as a canary in the coalmine for the supernatural and her wailing cries constantly keep you on edge. By emphasizing them so much in the beginning, only to drop them, creates a curious emotional vacuum once the film kicks into overdrive. It results in a film that’s technically proficient, visually engaging, but also curiously lacking warm blood in its veins.

OctoBOOr 7th: From Beyond, dir. Stuart Gordon, 1986 (United States). 3.5/5 pumpkins. 
“Humans are such…easy prey.”



The horror layman could be forgiven for mistaking From Beyond, at first glance, for a David Cronenberg film. And with a tighter focus, a more limited earth-tone color pallet, and more Spartan sets, it really could be, given its preoccupations with the mutability of the flesh (particularly through new technology, especially visual tech) and latent sexual desires unleashed by science gone awry. Videodrome might be the closest analog: the Resonator/television signals unlock our “third eyes,” this opening of new dimensions/vistas results in the adaptation of the human body, sex is intrinsically wrapped up in violent impulses (From Beyond’s antagonist, Dr. Pretorius, has a BDSM room beamed straight from Videodrome itself). But really, I’m grossly over-intellectualizing this film. Made by the same creative team that brought us Re-Animator (which was the single greatest horror comedy until Shaun of the Dead), From Beyond finds them tackling another H.P. Lovecraft short tale, in which dimensions that ought not to be probed are continually provoked, despite all evident warning signs. This outing doesn’t have the manic energy of Re-Animator, nor does it attempt to go for laughs, playing it much more straight this time out. It seems to want to have things both ways, however, as many moments are obviously played for camp value – the usually understated Ken Foree is hamming it up left and right, the lurid magentas and blues of the Resonator in action highlighting the superimposed beasties, scream queen Barbara Crampton’s forays into the pleasures of the flesh, etc. The creature designs and special effects are wildly divergent and suitably repulsive, the technobabble reaches just the right amount of incomprehensibility, and like any good H.P. Lovecraft tale, it wraps up with (spoiler alert!) everyone either dead or irretrievably mad. Watch out for interdimensional eels, y’all.

OctoBOOr 6th: Nightbeast, dir. Don Dohler, 1982 (United States). 1/5 pumpkins. 
“You’re a very attractive girl, Lisa.”



I suppose this was a movie, in that it was a series of scenes spliced together, featuring people in front of a camera, occasionally doing things. The story, such as it is, concerns the titular nightbeast crash-landing in some un-named backwater (I’m going with Flanneltown, U.S.A. given the costume department’s predilection towards that fabric), vaporizing folks in a blaze of disco glitter with his laser, and a sex scene that couldn’t possibly be more unappealing or less titillating if the nightbeast himself reared his, uh…head. Look, one does not go in to a Troma-produced film expecting seamless special effects, actors who will one day be cross-examined by James Lipton, or even a basic level of competence, really. I would expect at least a modicum of internal consistency, though—our second major action sequence with the nightbeast takes place in broad daylight. One just can’t trust this movie.

OctoBOOr 5th: Phenomena, dir. Dario Argento, 1985 (Italy). 4/5 pumpkins. 
“I love you. I love you *all*.”



…in which Jennifer Connelly gets a beetle all hot and bothered, so much so that it squirts its approval on Donald Pleasance. That’s not even the weirdest thing which happens in this film. The chosen quote is spoken by Connelly in a backlit Jesus pose to a swarm of descending, avenging flies. As far as Argento narratives go, Phenomena is rather straightforward. A killer is loose in picturesque Switzerland, Connelly is sent to a cloistered boarding school, she has a telepathic connection with insects, Donald Pleasance determines the age of severed heads through the cunning use of maggots, there’s a helper monkey – remember, I said straightforward for Argento. The Italian horror maestro is always on firmer footing, I believe, when his films are centered around the supernatural. The dream (nightmare?) logic his films adhere to works better when the trappings are a witches’ coven in Germany, or the fairytale setting of the Swiss Alps, rather than your standard giallo thriller. Nothing in here makes much sense – the dialogue careens randomly from English to German to Italian, the musical cues are wildly mismatched (a driving proggy synth arpeggio for a dreamlike sequence where a lightening bug leads Connelly to a crucial piece of evidence; Iron Maiden for the aftermath of a tragedy), plot threads are picked up and abandoned as soon as Argento sees the next shiny thing. The film has style to burn, sympathetic protagonists, and a real sense of forward momentum, though. It’s batshit crazy, yes, but consider that later this same year Connelly was traipsing around in stink swamps with David Bowie, his engorged codpiece, and a bunch troll Muppets. Is being a fly whisperer to seek out dead bodies really all that odd in comparison?

OctoBOOr 4th: The Frighteners, dir. Peter Jackson, 1996 (United States/New Zealand). 3/5 pumpkins. 
“Give it up, Frank. Death ain't no way to make a living!”



The Frighteners is not a remarkable film by any stretch of the imagination, and yet I keep coming back to it every couple of years. I was a huge Peter Jackson fanboy back in '96; the manic explosion of viscera that is Dead Alive knocked me for a loop, and the melancholic, emotionally gripping Heavenly Creatures split my teenage brain wide open (much like that film's unfortunate matriarch). This was the first Jackson film I was lucky enough to see in the theater. The film attempts to find that delicate balance between horror and humor, but ultimately doesn't have enough of either to be wholly satisfying. Ostensibly, the entire film is just a special effects demo reel for Jackson's upcoming adaptation of Lord of the Rings (and not just special effects - dig the waiter in the medieval-themed restaurant sporting the white tree of Gondor on his breastplate). The film rewards many repeat viewings (for this viewer, at least) for one reason - the considerable charm of lead actor Michael J. Fox (still his last starring film role). As such, the first half of the film, featuring Fox bickering with his housemate ghosts, who assist him in small-time paranormal cons, is much more rewarding than its back half, when it becomes an extended spook chase. Though again - watching Fox adapt to his surroundings when he joins the afterlife is a real treat, and Jackson certainly knows how to stage a gripping horror setpiece. Having genre veterans Jeffrey Combs and Dee Wallace Stone along for the ride is a cheeky touch, as well. Come for the Fox and irreverent tone, stay for the mostly still-impressive effects.

OctoBOOr 3rd: Dracula, dir. Tod Browning, 1931 (United States). 4/5 pumpkins. 
“For one who has not lived even a single lifetime, you're a wise man, Van Helsing.”



I was lucky enough to catch this in a movie theater last night, which is really ideal, given the stunning set design and gothic atmosphere with which this film drips. It’s a film carved from black marble, which is to its credit during the Transylvania-set scenes (witness the shot where Renfield is framed by the shadow from the window, casting bars across his face as he walks, quite literally, into the spider’s web). That’s to its detriment when it transitions to the drawing rooms of London, however, where the film falls flat when not centered around Bela Lugosi and his interactions with Van Helsing. Lugosi gets all the laurels – and deservedly so – but Dwight Frye is downright unhinged as the pitiable Renfield and almost steals the show. It’s a role that apparently brings out the scenery-chewing best in actors (see Tom Waits in Coppola’s take on Stoker’s tale). It might be blasphemous to say, as many moments in the film rely on the aural negative space, but the film certainly suffers on the whole from not having a musical score. To that end, once you've seen the original, I suggest seeking out the version with the accompanying Phillip Glass/Kronos Quartet score, commissioned in 1998. As Roger Ebert remarked, "The Glass score is effective in the way it suggests not just moody creepiness, but the urgency and need behind Dracula's vampirism. It evokes a blood thirst that is 500 years old."

OctoBOOr 2nd: Sleepaway Camp, dir. Robert Hiltzik, 1983 (United States). 2/5 pumpkins. 
“Eat shit and die, Ricky!” “Eat shit and live, Bill.”



It’s pretty remarkable that in the three short years since the opening salvo of the Friday the 13th series was released, the American “kids at summer camp” sub-genre of the slasher film managed to be so wink-wink nudge-nudge as is Sleepaway Camp. The kills are played for laughs more than genuine suspense; witness the kids’ banter which is more Meatballs than anything else. The psychosexual motivation behind the killer is a nice nod to giallo thrillers such as Argento’s Deep Red, which would be heavy-handed in this film if it weren’t so cheekily applied. The scariest thing about this film, really, is the short shorts on display. Thank heavens I was just barely out of diapers while that fashion trend stalked the earth. I do believe there’s only one (!) fake-out scare in the entire thing, which has got to be worth a few extra points.

OctoBOOr 1st: The Brood, dir. David Cronenberg, 1979 (Canada). 5/5 pumpkins.
“Thirty seconds after you're born you have a past and sixty seconds after that, you begin to lie to yourself about it.”

This is Kramer vs. Kramer in a horror context, wherein the family unit is no longer a safe harbor but rather a cauldron of envy, suspicion, and abuse. It’s a chilly and clinical allegory for divorce. Nearly all of the themes Cronenberg has spent the past 30+ years probing are present here – the revolt of the body against oneself, the shaky ground one’s reality stands upon, the rejection of the supernatural in favor of the speculative scientific. Cronenberg made better films later in his career, but he never again made one quite as pure as this one.