October/Halloween Movie Watching List

[metalmonster]

Sadly Ten Days Into This The Month Of October And I've Only Gotten Around To Watching One Horror Movie


It Was The Movie IT Starring Roddy Mcdowall

Roddy Mcdowall Plays A Lonely Assistant Curator At A Museum Who Lives With His Mother's Corpse , Until The Museum Acquires An Acient Golem Statue , Wich He Find's A Way To Bring It To Life To Kill People For Him

I'd Give It A 7 Out Of 10




What's On My List Of Things To Watch This Month:

REVENGE OF FRANKENSTEIN
ROSEMARY'S BABY
VOODOO BLACK EXARCIST
LET THE RIGHT ONE IN
THE HAUNTED PUMPKIN OF SLEEPY HOLLOW
THE FOUR SKULLS OF JOHNATHAN DRAKE
THE HAUNTED AIRMAN
SEVENTH MOON
MIDNIGHT'S CHILD
LET ME IN
WEREWOLF WOMAN
GOOD VERSUS EVIL
VOODOO ISLAND
CHAMBER OF HORRORS


I Hope I Have Time To Watch All Of These , I Haven't Had Time For Many Movies Lately!

[claws]

10.10.



Hatchet (2006)

I bought and watched the AB Blu-ray. Not a HD transfer that will knock you off your feet but it's clean and offers more detail during the darker scenes. And yeah, the movie still rules. Totally.
October/Halloween score: 5/5 for including Misty and Jenna (bless them!), Halloween prank gone bad, haunted swamp tours, puking girls, puking boys, puking madmen, animal attack, boobs attack, splashing guts & gore.

Jack Brooks: Monster Slayer (2007)

Jack is a student and plumber and because of childhood drama an aggressive individual as well. When his Professor at school turns into a Monster Jack turns into a certified Monster Slayer. This was very fun! I don't think they used any CGI at all, it was old school hand made effects all the way. Very entertaining creature feature.
October/Halloween score: 5/5 for including Robert Englund possessed by evil forces, raw meat eating, dog eating, tentacles from hell, monster head bashing, demonic slime infusion, throat punch.

[claws]

10.11.



The Amityville Horror (2005)

Family moves into new home and are tormented by speedy ghosts. Can dad's six pack abs of steel protect the family from evil? Kidding, even though those modern special effects don't seem to gel with the 1975 setting. Other than that this remake is fun and the Blu-ray comes with excellent quality.
October/Halloween score: 4/5 for including the hottest babysitter ever, haunted house theme, ghosts, wood chopping terror, creepy red balloon, flies attack, rooftop escape, escape with boat.

House of Wax (2005)

Six friends on their way to a football game are stuck in a tourist trap-like small town. The gas station owner turns out to be psycho and his disfigured twin brother runs the wax museum with real dead corpses. Neat remake by name only.
October/Halloween score: 3.5/5 for revealing Elisha Cuthbert's real height, for including graphic Paris Hilton death scene, cell phones that actually get a signal, fight scene in melting house, eyebrow waxing.

[Leah]

Psycho and Schindler's List.

[claws]

10.12.



Dracula (1992)

Nice dark setting, interesting costumes and hand made effects. To me Anthony Hopkins stood out the most, his odd performance is always making me grin. The Blu-ray quality is a mixed bag though. It can look good/very good at times but never truly breathtaking HD great.
October/Halloween score: 4.5/5 for including zoom on carcass, mini-exorcism with puking, child drop, chest sucking, climbing walls, sex with beast, garlic freak out.

Wolf (1994)

Jack Nicholson is growing hair on his hands and it ain't from masturbation. Equipped with developed wolf senses he must deal with job loss, sneaky colleagues and a cheating wife. When Michelle Pfeiffer comes on the scene it's mating season. Entertaining romantic thriller with a laid back Jack.
October/Halloween score 4/5 for including territorial p**sing, Michelle Pfeiffer slow motion toss, jumping Jack Nicholson, sleazy James Spader, deer hunt, horse barn showdown.

[Jack]

Dark Universe (1993) - A space shuttle is attacked by aliens - being a Fred Olen Ray film, I guess they didn't really have the money to film that.  Along similar lines, the entire ground crew consists of Joe Estevez.  By the 5 minute mark, you know for certain that you're in for a ride through the cheese festival    Anyhow, this thing crashes to earth and a small group of clueless people is sent out to the Florida swamps to look for it.  The acting is pretty bad and for some reason everybody acts like they're mad at each other, even though most of the time there doesn't seem to be any reason for it.  The shuttle's pilot has been turned into a rubber monster, and he kills off the search party one by one.  This was borderline boring, but the oddball acting and dialogue kept me watching just to see if it would be worth a few more chuckles.  2.5/5.

[claws]

10.13



Carrie (1976)

Screw the "bad" Blu-ray quality reviews of Carrie, this transfer looks fine to me. Hell, it looked even better than the Bram Stoker's Dracula blu.
October/Halloween score: 5/5 for including telekinetic ash tray flip, wobbling mirror with Hitchcock Psycho shower music, soft diffusion lenses scenes, split screen showdown.

The Little Girl Who Lives Down the Lane (1976)

Rynn is 13, new in town and lying about her fathers whereabouts. Townsfolk are curious but a crippled magician becomes her partner in crime and lover. Drama in Stage Play format with enough dark secrets to keep you guessing. Jodie Foster delivers great performance.
October/Halloween score: 4.5/5 for including Halloween birthday party, pedo-alert, hamster torture, poisoned tea switch, chipped tooth, magic tricks, muddy footprints, autumn setting, early snow, nosy cop.

[Jack]

Scarecrows (1988) - A group of soldiers steals 3.5 million in cash from their military base (I bet you didn't know they kept that kind of cash lying around on military bases, did you?  See, you learn stuff from watching movies  ).  They force the pilot of a small cargo plane to fly them to Mexico, but one of the thieves decides he wants it all for himself, so he bails out with the money and lands on a small farm, which has lots of spooky scarecrows all over the place.  It's not long before the remainder of the gang forces the pilot to land the plane on a nearby road, and then it's a creepy scarecrow free-for-all.  This way pretty good overall - somewhat creepy atmosphere, lots of yucky and fairly creative gore, and the action moved along a a fair pace.  It's biggest failing was that I didn't really care if everybody got killed, the character were somewhat developed, but not terribly sympathetic.  Except for the pilot of the airplane - she was incredibly hot!  I'll be a little generous and give it a 4/5.

[Sleepyskull]

Scarecrows (1988) - A group of soldiers steals 3.5 million in cash from their military base (I bet you didn't know they kept that kind of cash lying around on military bases, did you?  See, you learn stuff from watching movies  ).  They force the pilot of a small cargo plane to fly them to Mexico, but one of the thieves decides he wants it all for himself, so he bails out with the money and lands on a small farm, which has lots of spooky scarecrows all over the place.  It's not long before the remainder of the gang forces the pilot to land the plane on a nearby road, and then it's a creepy scarecrow free-for-all.  This way pretty good overall - somewhat creepy atmosphere, lots of yucky and fairly creative gore, and the action moved along a a fair pace.  It's biggest failing was that I didn't really care if everybody got killed, the character were somewhat developed, but not terribly sympathetic.  Except for the pilot of the airplane - she was incredibly hot!  I'll be a little generous and give it a 4/5.

Jack - I notice you frequently judge movies partly on the hotness of the women in them. This has me wondering how much enjoyment you would get out of these movies if you woke up one day with an inability to feel (I'll use a polite word) desire.  I'm not criticizing, I'm just honestly curious.   

[claws]

10.14.



Deadly Blessing (1981)

Woman and her two friends are being terrorized on a farm by an unknown killer. Meanwhile a religious community that would make the Amish appear like swingers are calling outsiders the Incubus. Fun & original horror from Wes Craven who would later incorporate several Deadly Blessing ideas into A Nightmare on Elm Street.
October/Halloween score: 4/5 for including Lois Nettleton as Louisa, spider drop into Sharon Stone's mouth, dry bed hump, creepy paintings, coffin chicken, driving lessons, untamed passion, dog attack, fight in bedroom.

Dark Night of the Scarecrow (1981)

Bubba, a mentally limited man is accused of killing a little girl. Bubba is lynch-mobed but returns as a Scarecrow to have his revenge. I must admit this film didn't do much for me on my first viewing back in the day. And I was more than surprised finding out that Dark Night of the Scarecrow has such a dedicated following. I wouldn't call it a masterpiece, as I have seen made for TV movies that had more impact on me and left a stronger impression. But I've always appreciated DNOTS enough to buy this DVD. It makes for a fun October viewing.
October/Halloween score: 4/5 for including Halloween party, pumpkin field showdown, grave digging, shovel kill.

[Jack]

Jack - I notice you frequently judge movies partly on the hotness of the women in them. This has me wondering how much enjoyment you would get out of these movies if you woke up one day with an inability to feel (I'll use a polite word) desire.  I'm not criticizing, I'm just honestly curious.   

The eye candy is like anything else in a film, it's one factor in the overall enjoyment, or lack thereof.  My main thing is if the characters are likable, which doesn't mean they need to be nice, but they need to have human-like personalities, which tend to be unique,  and you can't fully sum them up in one or two words.  If I don't care if these people live or die, the film is a total failure for me.  And then there's the atmosphere and suspense, since I watch a lot of horror.  Am I drawn into the movie, or is it just stuff happening on the screen, sending me into fits of yawning?  I've kind of given up on interesting stories, since almost everything I watch follows a simple formula.  Then there's the pacing of course;  am I watching paper thin characters that I dislike prattling about crap that has nothing to do with moving the plot forward, just because they had a 45 minute screenplay but the movie needed to last 90 minutes?  And then there's the overall quality of the production - is it done in a professional manner where the technical stuff is completely transparent, or am I laughing at the special effects, chuckling at the "actors" annunciating each syllable of their lines, getting annoyed with the terrible sound mix, rolling my eyes at the potpourri of ideas stolen blatantly from other movies? 

When you're talking about low budget movies, the quality in all these areas tend to somewhat lower than one might ideally prefer, so if they give the audience a bit of eye candy to make up for that, I certainly appreciate it.  It's more or less expected I think.  I could pick up the DVD of a 100 million dollar Hollywood movie, so why should I buy your 2 million dollar movie instead?  Oh, you've got totally hot babes in your movie.  Okay    Bottom line - there's a reason that sooooo many B movies feature hot babes, and it's not because only 1% of the audience cares about that stuff.

[Jack]

Creature of Darkness (2009) - Some young people go out to the woods for a camping trip and to ride their ATV's around.  There's gonna be an "unfortunately" in there somewhere    and unfortunately, there's an alien out in them thar woods, and he's collecting humans.  Or just killing them.  Disclaimer:  I was having a few beers while watching this, which probably made ALL the difference.  The characters started out as a rather unlikable bunch, but they sort of grew on me, especially after the monster thinned out the most detestable of them.  I thought the plot moved along at a pretty good pace, which is a rather noteworthy accomplishment for this sort of movie.  The monster, oh jeez.  Either in the plastic mask or the CGI version, he was rather hilarious.  The special effects lived up to the same standard.  But the characters actually rose above the usual "idiots getting killed idiotically" cliche and developed a bit of a plan to fight back.  I enjoyed this quite a bit    4/5.

[claws]

The eye candy is like anything else in a film, it's one factor in the overall enjoyment, or lack thereof.  My main thing is if the characters are likable, which doesn't mean they need to be nice, but they need to have human-like personalities, which tend to be unique,  and you can't fully sum them up in one or two words.  If I don't care if these people live or die, the film is a total failure for me.  And then there's the atmosphere and suspense, since I watch a lot of horror.  Am I drawn into the movie, or is it just stuff happening on the screen, sending me into fits of yawning?  I've kind of given up on interesting stories, since almost everything I watch follows a simple formula.  Then there's the pacing of course;  am I watching paper thin characters that I dislike prattling about crap that has nothing to do with moving the plot forward, just because they had a 45 minute screenplay but the movie needed to last 90 minutes?  And then there's the overall quality of the production - is it done in a professional manner where the technical stuff is completely transparent, or am I laughing at the special effects, chuckling at the "actors" annunciating each syllable of their lines, getting annoyed with the terrible sound mix, rolling my eyes at the potpourri of ideas stolen blatantly from other movies? 

When you're talking about low budget movies, the quality in all these areas tend to somewhat lower than one might ideally prefer, so if they give the audience a bit of eye candy to make up for that, I certainly appreciate it.  It's more or less expected I think.  I could pick up the DVD of a 100 million dollar Hollywood movie, so why should I buy your 2 million dollar movie instead?  Oh, you've got totally hot babes in your movie.  Okay    Bottom line - there's a reason that sooooo many B movies feature hot babes, and it's not because only 1% of the audience cares about that stuff.

That pretty much explains why most women don't appreciate low budget movies like men do 

[claws]

10.15.



Rosemary's Baby (1968)

Young couple encounter witches and satan in new apartment building. Classic thrills that still delivers the goods.
October/Halloween score: 5/5 for including surreal nightmares, body painting, nude coven, devil chant, asian tourist with camera, black cradle, breast milk, awful vidal sassoon hairdo.

Let's Sare Jessica to Death (1971)

Young couple + friend encounter ghostly vampire in new old house by the lake. Just like good wine this one gets better with age.
October/Halloween score: 5/5 for including Mariclare Costello as Emily, zombified townsfolk, scary stuff in the water, stuffy attic, dead mole, poison apples, seance, inner monologue, whispering voices, electronic score.

Don't Look Now (1973)

Young couple in Venice are haunted by the spirit of dead daughter. A blind psychic predicts an unhappy ending though. Excellent psychological horror that almost could have been a great giallo too!
October/Halloween score: 5/5 for including chilly Venice, white rats, dooming red color, psychic breast rub, extended sex, eerie canal travel vision.

[Jack]

Hatchet (2006) - some people go on a scary boat tour of the haunted swamps of Louisiana.  The boat sinks and they end up getting chased around by a deformed psycho killer.  This is one of those "funny" horror movies;  they're very rarely successful even when the humor is clever, but this one is borderline Dumb and Dumber.  Definitely not my type of movie at all.  1.5/5.