October Horror Movie Massacre!!!

[FatFreddysCat]

Second film of my October Horror Hootenanny:

"Tucker and Dale vs. Evil" (2011)

This horror comedy takes ever cliche and convention of the "killer hillbilly" genre and turns them completely upside down. It's funny as hell, it's gory as hell, it's a great time!!

[fulci420]

Movie #7
P2 (2007)
Horror movies love trapping people in isolated situations. I've seen people stuck in elevators, coffins, ski lifts, and many a cabin in my horror viewing experience. P2's contribution to the genre is a parking garage. It's Christmas eve and our heroine needs to get to a party ASAP. Unfortunately her attempts to leave the parking garage are constantly thwarted by a creeper security guard who chains her up and tries to force her to eat Christmas dinner with him.
This was watchable throughout but overall pretty weak. Our villain seems weird enough but his performance lacks either the menace or charm that would make such a character work. The biggest problem here is that the whole thing feels like the third act of any slasher film stretched out to a whole movie. Co scripted by Alexander Aja and directed by one of the writers of Aja's "High Tension" I expected a lot more out of this one.

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

Movie # 8
VHS 2 (2013)
The found footage shorts are back with this sequel to VHS. I think the fun of these kind of movies is going in not knowing whats going to happen in these segments so I wont talk about plots too much. I would say on average these shorts are slightly weaker than the first film but with one standout part called "Safe Haven" from director Gareth Evans. Evans shot to prominence with "The Raid Redemption" and shows with his segment that his talents go beyond action. Focusing on documentary filmmakers trying to expose a cult this segment goes directions I would have never expected and was totally tense and awesome. By far the best segment of either film. I know this series has it's detractors and I will admit that not every segment is good but I personally hope this series continues. Its a great chance to expose yourself to new directors and it is fun seeing just where their going to stick a camera next.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=63Tv0lhD1fw

[ChaosTheory]

Day Three
THE LOST SKELETON OF CADAVERA - snarky "homage" to 1950s z-budget sci-fi movies.  It probably would have worked as a short, but as a feature it's just kind of grating and tedious and it thinks it's about 100000 times more clever than it is.  (It was like 97 straight minutes of reading El Misfit's posts.)
2/10


Day Four
Didnt' watch anything. There was a blizzard and I had no power.

Day Five
FUNERAL HOME (1980) - A girl goes to visit her grandmother and help her convert the family's funeral home into a bed & breakfast - how could that idea possibly fail?  Soon some of the more unsavory guests start to disappear and there's some strange noises coming from the basement.  This was pretty dull but there were unintentionally hilarious performances.  4/10

Day Six
MST3K: BEGINNING OF THE END - Mike & the Bots take on a Bert I. Gordon grasshopper invasion movie.  This isn't a particularly strong episode but it does feature the famous "Peter Graves at the University of Minnesota" sketch. 6/10

[fulci420]

Movie # 9
ATM (2012)
Oh god why do I do this to myself. So I guess an hour and a half of people stuck in a parking garage/chair lift/cabin wasn't enough for me I just had to see one where they get stuck in a freaking ATM building. So exactly like P2 we start off with some christmas music and yep there's an office christmas party too just like in P2. We are introduced to our main guy whose sole quirk is being awkward and his buddy whose sole quirk is being a douche. Add in the pretty love interest and we have our trio. They decide to go the ATM that is located in the middle of the worlds biggest vacant parking lot and are promptly trapped by some guy in a parka. Yes the villain of the piece is a guy in a Parka who just stands there for the most part. Oh yeah he cant get into the ATM building because he doesn't have the right card... At one point a security guard comes by and asks them if everything is ok despite HELP being written on the glass. Excruciating makes every bad horror movie I've seen so far this month seem like pure genius.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=geffQdBbKzI

[Chainsawmidget]

Yesterday's movies that i forgot to write about weren't actually horror movies, but were suitably Halloweenish.  


The Elvira Show


An unaired pilot for a sitcom starring Elvira.  She lives with her aunt.  They're both witches, although not very powerful ones.  Then Elvira's extremely sheltered neice comes to live with them.  As far as sitcomes go, it's not bad, but not great.  You can find it on Youtube if you want.  

I also watched
Monster Mash


There's probably several dozen movies and shows that use this name, but the one I watched was a cartoon by DiC.  Basically the old monsters have lost their touch and are stuck doing shows like Foolish Monster tricks to earn money.  A group of modern monsters see this and feel insulted.  The old classics are then put on trial and the judge tells them that they have 24 hours to scare a normal family or they'll be sentenced to doing children;s birthday parties forever.  

The cartoon suffers a bit from some ugly character designs and blatantly reusing animation, but it's good for a nice Saturday Morning style diversion.  I can't help but think this would be viewed as a classic if it had been done in live action instead.  

[Pilgermann]

I haven't watched too much, yet, in fact I've only watched one film in October so far:

The Dark (1979) - A mysterious creature is tearing off random people's heads at night.  The first victim was the daughter of an ex-con turned mega-popular novelist.  He gets involved in the manhunt along with a spunky reporter.  The cops act like jerks.  I was distracted during this but got the gist of it and it's got a lot of funny and ridiculous bits, especially the big climactic showdown with the alien creature at the end.  Aside from clawing people to bits it also shoots lasers out of its eyes.  6/10

Towards the end of September I kicked off my Halloween viewing with these:

Something Evil (1972) - Early Spielberg made for TV flick about a haunted house.  It had some creepy stuff here and there and is mostly enjoyable but the end is a little goofy.  7/10

The Innocents (1961) - Lovely and creepy Victorian ghost story.  The wealthy uncle of two orphaned children hires a woman as a governess to watch over his niece and nephew.  There are secrets and strange happenings in this excellent film.  8/10, possibly a 9/10

The Hearse (1980) - A recently divorced woman goes off to the country to stay a while in the house she inherited from her aunt.  The locals treat her coldly and spooky stuff happens in the house and she's also terrorized by a mysterious hearse.  She's got some nice legs, too.  Nothing amazing here but it's the comforting sort of harmless horror film I enjoy late at night.  7/10

[Chainsawmidget]

I just watched Cry Wolf. 

I don't care enough about it to get a picture for it. 

It's a slasher movie.  In some prestigious prep school, a group of friends spread a hoax e-mail about a serial killer.  Naturally this makes the real serial killer unhappy and he starts stalking them... or does he? 

Sadly, there isn't a single likeable character in this movie.  They all come across as total pricks and the more the movie tries to get you to feel sorry for them, the less you actually care. 

On top of that, the movie stacks it's twists at the end one right after another. 

I watched the unrated directors cut version.  It's possible that the PG-13 version was better, but I doubt it. 

[claws]

The Hearse (1980) - A recently divorced woman goes off to the country to stay a while in the house she inherited from her aunt.  The locals treat her coldly and spooky stuff happens in the house and she's also terrorized by a mysterious hearse.  She's got some nice legs, too.  Nothing amazing here but it's the comforting sort of harmless horror film I enjoy late at night.  7/10

This is a favorite of mine, I even saw it at the Theater when I was a kid and it scared me nearly too death back then haha.

[claws]

10.07.13 (10)



Halloween: Unrated Director's Cut (2007) (Blu-ray)

Rob Zombie's epic white trash slasher remake split the fans but was a decent box office success nonetheless. It's loud, vulgar, sadistically brutal and constantly in your face. Quite the opposite from John Carpenter's easy going chiller. I still enjoy this for what it is but it won't ever replace the original. 4/5

[Jack]

Quatermass and the Pit (1967) - while digging a new subway tunnel in London, workers find some ancient human remains.  Five millions years old.  Scientists are called in to investigate, and then they find what they think is an unexploded WWII bomb, which turns out to actually be a spaceship.  Professor Quatermass (Andrew Keir) and a group of other specialists try to get into it, and what will they find inside?  This is a lifelong favorite of mine.  I saw it when I was a little kid and loved it, so I still love it now.  Really intriguing storyline which mixes alien stuff with Satanic stuff, which is an odd combo but I think it worked really well.  Effects are a bit hokey but that adds to the charm.  The ending, well it doesn't really make any sense at all, but hey just go with it    5/5.

Pieces (1982) - a chainsaw wielding slasher is loose on a college campus.  This is just about as dumb and goofy as you can get, but for some reason it holds a certain appeal.  A cult classic I guess.  The cops think it would be a good idea to keep the whole serial killer thing secret - what importance do a few lives have compared to the good reputation of the university?  They do absolutely nothing to catch the killer, that's all done by one of the students.  He gets ALL the girls despite looking like an older version of Screech from Saved by the Bell.  Then you've got a "Kung Fu Professor" who goes around attacking random people on campus due to having eaten some bad sushi.  And a girl who gets into an elevator with the killer but fails to notice he's hiding a chainsaw behind his back.  And on and on;  the cops send a professional tennis player in as an undercover agent.  She plays an exhibition match and it's obvious she's about as good at tennis as I am. 

The ending - the very last little bit at the very end - is pure genius    4/5.

[crackers]

I have been away a while, so I'm going to start today.

First up

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A97EOtxF2gA

I love this film, but not seen it in a while.

[Jack]

Paranormal Asylum (2013) - a couple of guys decide to put some cameras in an abandoned asylum in the hopes of picking up some paranormal activity.  Typhoid Mary was once there, and, well...I guess the writers think "typhoid" is a form of demonic possession or something    Anyhow there's tons of paranormal activity from the very second they arrive.  The main guy who has zero personality keeps seeing stuff and telling the second guy, who's a complete jerk, about his sightings.  He doesn't believe him.  If only the main guy would remember that he filmed every freakin' one of these occurrences and he could just show the video to the other guy.  He's not quite that smart though.

Nothing about this makes a damned bit of sense.  On the outside the asylum is in ruins, looking like it's been abandoned for a century at least.  On the inside it's a brand new hospital - it looks like they just asked the doctors and nurses to step out for a moment so they could film a scene.  Seriously, do they think anyone would actually buy into this?  That's the whole movie in a microcosm.  They catch enough paranormal activity on film in 5 minutes to fill two seasons of Ghost Hunters, yet they sit around like they've got nothing.  The jerk's fiancee gets possessed, but in keeping with his "I just met her yesterday" level of affection for her, he doesn't care.  She dyes her hair dark to look like Typhoid Mary.  Mary was a fat woman in her 40's, not a hot goth chick.   

1.75/5.

[Jack]

Prom Night IV: Deliver Us from Evil (1992) - some kids go to a house out in the woods to do some of that naughty stuff kids like to do.  Unfortunately a psycho priest has recently escaped from a church where he'd been imprisoned for 30 years, and he's not a fan of the naughty stuff kids do    This is a big favorite of mine, just brimming with '80s / early '90s "scary" slasher atmosphere.  The main girl is sweet, the other one's a bit tart, the two guys are likeable goofs.  There's a nice prologue where we learn about the killer and his motivations.  I guess it's just a typical slasher but one that, in my opinion, does everything right.  5/5.

[fulci420]

Movie # 10
The Ruins (2008)
Some tourists go check out some ruins and encounter whacky weeds and angry locals. Really boring, kind of hated it.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vzdto154_to

Movie # 11
Eden Lake (2008)
This UK horror film is definitely the most disturbing of the 00's horror I have been watching this month. Michael Fassbender and his wife are tourists who decide to go camping on a lake in the English Countryside. Everything seems idyllic until they come across some of the most repulsive teenagers I have ever seen in movies or life. Loud violent and completely unreasonable you want these kids to be punished from the moment they appear on screen. However just when you think you have predicted the progression of this type of movie (Civilized couple are terrorized by criminal youth, pushed to breaking point, get bloody revenge) your expectations are continuously subverted.

Instead of being your typical revenge picture we get something much more disturbing in its brutality. Even as a hardened horror fan I think there are sequences that go into gratuitous territory. As a viewer we are disgusted by the teenagers from the get go so I don't really think we need an extended scene of them taking turns stabbing someone. It's tricky to judge a movie like this, on one hand it's got great acting, its tense and nicely shot. On the other hand it's sheer level of depravity with complete lack of conventional retribution makes you wonder what there is to gain from such an experience. File this with "The Girl Next Door" (Not the Elisha Cuthbert one) as exceptionally made films that you couldn't pay me to watch again.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_9kuMFPW0YI

[Rev. Powell]

MY MOM IS A WEREWOLF (1989)

It's got a werewolf and I found it in Mill Creek's "Pure Terror" 50 pack, so I guess I can post this here. It also has a scene set at a Halloween party.

A teenager's ditzy mom nearly has an affair, but is bitten by a werewolf instead. This clumsy and unfunny comedy might have work as a raunchy R-rated sex romp, but it's shot with the timid tone of a TV movie. The only really interesting part is a bizarre dentist scene that looks like a tribute LITTLE SHOP OF HORRORS. 2/5 for bad movie fans, 1/5 for normal people.