Badmovies.org's 2012 Annual October Horror Movie Watching Thread

[Jack]

Blood from the Mummy's Tomb (1971) - a guy has the sarcophagus of an Egyptian queen down in his basement.  She's perfectly preserved, hasn't aged or decomposed at all, and coincidentally his daughter is the spitting image of her.  Of course the queen slowly takes over the mind of the daughter, and she must gather up the other artifacts from the tomb to bring the queen back to life.  This was pretty good, with lots going on in the plot to keep it interesting.  The queen laying in her sarcophagus was quite sexy as well    4/5.

House of Dracula (1945) - a doctor is running his practice out of an old castle, and good ol' Count Dracula comes to him looking for a cure for his affliction.  Not long after the wolfman also shows up seeking help, and they happen to find Frankenstein's monster laying around in a cave too.  Turns out Dracula is kind of an evil guy and throws a monkey wrench in the doctor's helpful plans to cure everyone.  This was entertaining just due to all the monsters in it.  Good characters too.  My wife couldn't figure out how Dracula could be wearing a top hat, then turn into a bat and fly around, then turn back into a person and presto!  The top hat reappears lol.  3.5/5.

White Zombie (1932) - a young couple go to Haiti to be married, but a landowner there is in love with the woman, and he has the evil Bela Lugosi turn the woman into a zombie so he can have her for his own.  Of course this doesn't go over to well with the woman's fiancee, so he's off to solve the mystery.  This has some great scenes, like when we go to Lugosi's sugar plantation which is staffed entirely by zombies.  They run a sugar mill with all the creaking machinery you can imagine, and it's positively atmospheric as heck.  Unfortunately I just can't get into the totally melodramatic theme music these old movies have, and the overacting doesn't exactly draw me into the story.  Still worth a watch.  3.5/5.

[Andrew]

Insecticidal (2005).  A young woman's bug experiments get loose in the sorority house, grow huge, and start eating the girls.  There's a moderate amount of nudity, but except for the first shower scene, all of the naked girls are flat-chested.  As in I have a bigger chest.  The bugs are all horrible CGI creations, especially the preying mantis that has a mouth like a giant green chicken.  Also, the editing is often terrible.  I still do not know how Cami (the bug girl) left the basement without encountering the giant spider.

Lesson Learned: 
Scorpions know how to use spray-on wipe-off shower cleaner.
A portion of a human arm is indistinguishable from a loofah.

[SynapticBoomstick]

Monster Movie #5

Monster Dog, October 22^nd


This is a Spanish werewolf film from 1985 starring Alice Cooper as Vince, a pop star going back to his hometown to shoot a music video. It's important to note that this is a Spanish film because I didn't know that until after I'd watched it and did some brief research. At the time all the acting and sound work seemed off to me, it was as though Alice Cooper were trying to channel Jeff Goldblum throughout the entire movie. Of course now I get that the movie had to be dubbed into english, hence why it all seemed jerky- Cooper didn't even dub his own voice, which explained a lot.

At its core, Monster Dog is a basic survival horror movie. Vince and friends have to beware of both the Monster Dog and the locals out to bust Vince for the ties his father had to a similar outbreak that happened twenty years before. The old house where everything unfolds is probably the best thing about the movie because it's an old sprawling behemoth with all kinds of weird rooms and half-finished alcoves filled with weird things like old dolls and stuffed clowns. The Monster Dog itself is pretty cool as what you see in the poster is actually what you get but it's always obscured by mist, fog, plaster dust, or smoke so you never get a really good look at it.

And here's why I got pulled in right from "Go":

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=--0vdeoudq8
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Rating: Fun-size Mr. Goodbar
It's not Bestbar, it's not Worstbar, it's just Goodbar. You could do better than Monster Dog. Sure, you could do worse than Monster Dog. But if you're looking for middle of the road, tell a story horror then you wouldn't be making a poor choice here. Just enough gore, camp, character, and story to be comfortable with lunch and a can of A&W .

[Chainsawmidget]

White Zombie (1932) - a young couple go to Haiti to be married, but a landowner there is in love with the woman, and he has the evil Bela Lugosi turn the woman into a zombie so he can have her for his own.  Of course this doesn't go over to well with the woman's fiancee, so he's off to solve the mystery.  This has some great scenes, like when we go to Lugosi's sugar plantation which is staffed entirely by zombies.  They run a sugar mill with all the creaking machinery you can imagine, and it's positively atmospheric as heck.  Unfortunately I just can't get into the totally melodramatic theme music these old movies have, and the overacting doesn't exactly draw me into the story.  Still worth a watch.  3.5/5.

If nothing else, you have to give White Zombie points for having the best villain name ever.  It just doesn't get any better than Murder Legendre.

So, what movie did I watch?  The Killer Eye:  Halloween Haunt

It's Full Moon at it's worst.  Puppets for no reason, hopelessly shilling their merchandise, padding their time with clips from another movie, a plot that makes no sense, but on the flipside, it does have lots of nudity. 

[fulci420]

Film 19
Visiting Hours
I first heard about this movie when I read "They Came From Within: A History of Canadian Horror Cinema", a book which I cannot reccomend enough. This film was shot in montreal when Canada was the destination for cool horror films. Impressed by his preformance in Cronenburg's "Scanners" producers chose Michael Ironside to play the villain in this disturbing slasher. The toast of Canada himself William Shatner also appears in a supporting role.

I found this film quite a bit more frightening then other slasher films made at this time. For a slasher this one makes an interesting choice of revealing the killers identity pretty much from the beginning. For a lesser villian this would be a mistake but in this case the fact that we know how creepy Ironside's character is from early on only adds to the suspense. This is certainly among the bleakest slasher films I have seen as it spends little to no time on titillation or comic relief.

Complaint wise I think this could have been a tad bit shorter and our protagonist could have been better developed. Overall however I think this is a fine horror film that would make a great double bill with Halloween II due to its hospital setting.

[AndyC]

Let's Scare Jessica to Death - Been mentioned here already. Good movie. Love the atmosphere of those early-70s horror flicks. Still can't decide if the ending is clever and perfect or sudden and disappointing.

Nightbeast (1982) - Early 80s sci-fi horror with a title that sounds cool but has little to do with the movie. This was a movie I remembered seeing on the shelf back in the 80s, before I really started watching horror. Only recently got around to watching it. I can forgive a lot of this movie's shortcomings - the cheesy effects, the community-theatre acting, the overall cheapness of the thing. I can even overlook the sheriff's ridiculous perm. What I can't get past is the alien's inexplicable actions throughout. I mean, it isn't a beast at all. It's an intelligent being from a civilization sophisticated enough for interstellar travel. So, why is it acting like a homicidal idiot? I mean, what would you do if you crashed, by yourself, on a strange planet full of strange creatures? Lay low, stay out of sight, find food and shelter while attracting as little attention as possible until help arrives? No, this guy wanders aimlessly all over the countryside, shooting or disemboweling everybody he sees. Sure, he does chow down on a bit of human flesh, but mostly he just leaves bodies lying all over the place, when he can't disintegrate them. What the hell?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iKeMeA3eD6w
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[66Crush]

In honor of Bela Lugosi's birthday this weekend I watched:

Devil Bat

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KOuK_luBN-4
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and

Bride of the Monster

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tMb21v2d9D0
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[JoeTheDestroyer]

Movie 46: Audition (1999)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rp0OWdkt2LA
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Movie 47: Apollo 18 (2011)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0F6DU6gx7-w
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I enjoy found footage horror, even during mundane moments when the characters are doing nothing but being human (or maybe that's what I like about the movies).  This one, sadly, didn't impress me.  I nodded off quite a few times out of boredom only to be treated to a light amount of scares.  I don't know why, but somehow this movie didn't inspire me to care about the characters or their situation--something any f-f movie worth its salt should do.  I found myself wanting the movie to end just so I could go to bed and send the disc back to Netflix. 

[Jack]

Son of Frankenstein (1939) - The son of the original Dr. Frankenstein moves into the castle he's inherited from his father.  The villagers all hate him because of the little monster problem his father created, but of course he assures them that he has no plans to carry on dad's work.  Not for the first five minutes at least.  As it turns out, the monster is still alive, and Ygor (Bela Lugosi) has been using him to carry out a string of murders.  But now our bolt-necked buddy is in a coma and the good doctor needs to revive him.  He can't resist carrying on his father's work, so it's not long at all before we've got a monster roaming around and Dr. F trying to cover the whole thing up.  What will happen?  Will villagers with torches and pitchforks storm the castle?  Probably     I really enjoyed this.  Fantastic performance by Lugosi as the evil Ygor, he really stole the show.  Basil Rathbone does a good job as the doctor / world's worst liar.  He really gets stressed out when the town's inspector figures out what's going on.  Some excellent B&W photography as well, very atmospheric.  4/5.

[Andrew]

Legacy of Blood (1971) - hosted by Elvira
This is a confusing mess, which manages to have no characters who are likeable.  Well, at least I think that was intentional.  What was not intentional is how confusing and how boring it is, and how icky the incest angle is between the disturbed man and his sister.  John Carradine as the nasty old father who died and left his estate to his nasty children was a waste, because he didn't get to utter any techno-babble.  Something fun I did notice is that two of the people from "This Island Earth" are there, both Faith Domergue and Jeff Morrow.  It's also hard not to notice Buck Kartalian's hairy back.  I swear that the man didn't need the monkey suit in "Planet of the Apes" when he appeared as Julius.

Nazis at the Center of the Earth (2012)
Scientists as a research station in the Antarctic encounter rotting Nazis who have been hiding under the ice.  This is a much meaner film than the film it is ripping off, "Iron Sky."   The skinning of the one character, rape and skinning of a woman, and forced abortion of a pregnant girl are really mean-spirited.  The robo-Hitler was much more fun, and more in line with the Asylum's normally campy horror.

[fulci420]

Film 20
Bloody Moon (1981)
Jess Franco's lone foray into the slasher subgenre. Having as far as I know not seen any of Franco's work I decided to check this one out. So what we have here is a pretty typical slasher setup with a disfigured murderer on the loose and a bunch of ladies at a spanish language school to prey on.

Like a lot of films of this type, the plot is largely an afterthought. What is important here is a series of inventive kills which we certainly find here. Some of the kills are particularly graphic and work quite well in closeup. Overall this is a well shot film with interesting locations and nice camera movement. The dialogue and dubbing is pretty abysmal  but that is to be expected. Overall this was a slightly above average entry to the slasher genre that makes me interested in checking out a couple more of Franco's films.

[JoeTheDestroyer]

Movie 48: City of the Living Dead (1980)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l2uPJQVncHE
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[Jim H]

Recent watches..

Satan's Little Helper.  Pretty terrible little indy film.  Has a couple recognizable actors, a few funny moments, and a good concept (a serial killer on Halloween getting helped by a hapless kid who thinks none of what is going on is real) - but it's just bland, sometimes poorly edited, poorly directed/shot, and a lot of stuff happens off-screen for no reason (several deaths are totally off-screen, as in you don't even see the bodies or hear them get killed, and it feels like the movie is trying to be cheap rather than creepy).  Bad ending/twists too, which you can see coming a mile off.

3/10

Descent part 2.  Oh boy, the sequel to a very good British horror film, which had a nihilistic ending that was impossible to make a direct sequel to.  So, they went off the botched American-altered ending, which is somewhat happier.  This one is just bad though.  REALLY stupid character decisions, an unbelievable central plot (really?  Just going to drag off the lead from the previous film into the caves without telling anyone?), cheap and lazy scares...  Just not real good.  They also show WAY more of the crawlies here, and this is not to the film's benefit.  All of the claustrophobia and creepiness of the original film is gone.  It's like the corpse of a good film.  It does have some good gore and the pacing is OK at least.  It is watchable.  Atrocious twist ending as well, which just doesn't make any sense.

4/10.

Mummy's Hand.  The second Universal mummy film.  It's alright.  Short, relatively fast moving.  It's also clearly the larger inspiration for the Brendan Fraser remake, which I hadn't realized.  Some good comic relief, but it takes way too long to get going, and once it does not enough happens.  Worth a watch for Universal horror fans, but definitely one of the lesser films from the classic era (World War II era or earlier, how I define it).  

6/10.

I also, on a whim, bought The Nest, the Roger Corman cockroach film.  It's been on my "watch this eventually" list since the 1990s, but I somehow never got to it.  Oddly enough, I just found out it's getting a Blu-ray release in January!  We'll see if it is worth an upgrade in a few days when it arrives.

[JoeTheDestroyer]

Movie 49: The Keep (1983)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y7t0B2URcT8
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Only now did I finally see the entire movie, and I honestly wasn't all that impressed.  I love the atmosphere, music, some of the early special effects, and certain components of the story.  The main thing that puts me off is that the antagonist speaks.  I know this sounds like a weird thing to get fussy over, but I just prefer spiritual entities that don't talk much.  It makes them much creepier.  Nonetheless, I didn't dislike the movie, and actually enjoy it for the most part.  I'm just not very thrilled by it.

Movie 50: Night of the Living Dead (1968)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZRkrQZ0A1SU
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[Jack]

Frankenstein (1931) - mad scientist Dr. Frankenstein (Colin Clive) creates a monster (Boris Karloff) and, well, perhaps you know the rest of the story.     Really enjoyed this, the highlight being Karloff's performance.  The way he lopes around like a powerful, unpredictable beast creates a sense of menace that none of the numerous other Frankenstein movies can even come close to.  Colin Clive puts in a good performance as Dr. Frankenstein and Frederick Kerr adds a touch of charm as his cantankerous father.  4.5/5.

The Bride of Frankenstein (1935) - picks up right where the previous movie left off.  Of course our antagonist survived the climax of the previous film and sets in motion another string of events.  Turns out Dr. Frankenstein isn't the only one working on creating life;  another mad scientist is working on the same project and blackmails our good doctor into helping his with his project - creating a bride for our flat-headed fiend.  The first two-thirds of this are mildly comedic which is sort of enjoyable in its own way, but I could have done without it.  It's in the last third that it takes off.  The scene where the bride is brought to life really shines - between the lighting, editing and B&W photography, and the awesome contraption they use to transfer the electricity from the lightning to the bride's body...77 years old and that thing still looks awesomely cool  4/5.

The Ghost of Frankenstein (1942) - picks up where Son of Frankenstein left off.  Ygor is still looking for somebody to help his shambling friend, so he goes to Frankenstein's other son and blackmails him into assisting him.  They decide a brain transplant is all that's needed to fulfill his father's original dream, but as you might guess that doesn't go exactly as planned.  Another great entry in the series, with good performances by all a good subplot to add a bit more interest to the proceedings.  4/5.