Netflix. This is an item that is more addictive than crack, crystal meth, and magic the gathering. See, if you dont know what it is, you are probably not reading this blog as you have no internet connection. Netflix is a service that allows you to add movies to a queue and then miracle upon miracle they show upon your door. Even better, they have a virtual library that allows you to watch movies and tv shows online INSTANTLY.
This...this last piece brought a tear to my eye. You see they have hours...nigh...days or months of viewing TV shows. Now that...that my friends is the miracles of modern technology. You want to watch Hercules? Right now...on the internet.... GO. You want to watch The Office? Which one British or American.... GO.
Now most of you are asking, "Where are you going with this you verbose imbecile? More importantly, what in the flying fuck does this have to do with horror?" Well first, they keep up to date with the current releases of horror films allowing me to have a DVD within days of request. Point the second is they have recently put the entire Troma library on instaview. Finally, the shows that are on the instaview include not only Dexter, but Showtimes Masters of Horror.
For those unfamiliar, Masters of Horror was a Showtime series in which a "master" of the horror genre would direct an episode of the hour long show. Dario Argento, John Carpenter, and Tobe Hooper have all done episodes. As have numerous other directors of the genres best and brightest. Then...there are some of the lower points. Here in, I shall do a spot review of the episodes watched. There are some mild spoilers as well.
Director(his previous work): Title : score
John McNaughton(Henry:portrait of a serial killer): Haeckels Tale : 3/5
Zombies, necromancers and a touch of a love story. This wasnt bad. There were a couple of twists but frankly they were way down the road so you could see them coming. Acting, setting and story were good. There were no scares. Shock, maybe, but no scares.
Mick Garris(The Stand): Chocolate : 5/5
Wow. What an interesting idea. This is a story of a guy who gets the sensations from the girl of his dreams. Things go poorly. As above, acting, setting and story are phenomenal. No real scares but the creepy is ramped up to give this the 5/5.
Joe Dante(Gremlins): Homecoming: 5/5
Holy crap. This one was poinant as well as fun. The reparte between the leads was divine. Story was about a guy who wanted dead vets to vote based on the current war. It goes poorly. Bonus points for the Anne Coulter wannabe. The awesome of this flick cannot be described.
I didn't see this one. Internet wifey review paraphrased. :3/5
John Landis(American Werewolf in London): Deer Woman: Based on the Native American myth that a woman with deer legs would lure men into the forest, get them horny, then stomp them to death. She was doing it in real life. No motive...its just what she does. Good story, acting and CG. It was easily followed. It had no real scares but was an interesting concept.
Dario Argento(Suspira...being the dad of Asia Argento): Pelts : 4/5(it gets a bonus 1 because Asia who is no where near this movie aside from Darios genetic make up)
What...the...hell. See this is the statement I have with lots of Dario Argentos work(including his daughter Asia. I mean ....damn its nice to see the beauty genes pass a generation. Nomnomnom). This short was odd. Furriers, raccoons and a stripper involved. It had an interesting cast(Meatloaf?????). It had a weird story. It had an odd follow through and twist.
Dario Argento(Asia's dad again): Jenifer: 5/5(Asia is Darios daughter dammit).
What... the... fuck? This was really good. I enjoyed the story of a guy who defends a "defenseless" woman and pays with his entirety. Really well done. Cast was good. Story was weird. Best to be seen as opposed to be talked about. Simply cop finds bad things about to happen to girl. Girl is train wreck. White knight saves. White knight falls. Rinse repeat.
Takashi Miike(Ishi the Killer): Imprint: I give it a 1/5. If you dig torture porn, inverse the review
Damn. This was a bad one. I couldnt complete it. I guess despite watching zombies eat the living guts outta some one or watching Cathy Bates hobble someone or watching Uwe Boll movies, I cannot really abide serious torture flicks. Hostel...meh. This... HOLY CRAP ON TOAST. Chicks getting junk sewed. Hmmmm fuck no. The plot was a gai jin who is looking for his lost hooker love to sweep her away to the shores of America. She dies...badly. I stopped watching in point of fact.
John "the motherfuckin man" Carpenter (Halloween, The Thing) : Pro Life: 6/5 (it gets the internet wifey bonus of plus one for Ron Perlman).
Loved it. Great characters. Good story. Girl goes for an abortion of the anti christ. Dad, a pro life worshipper of the almighty and freaks that its the devil is against this. Violence ensues. Glorious violence.
Rob Schmidt(Wrong Turn????): Right to Die : 4/5 (bonus of hot crispy brings it to the 5/5)
Guy watches wife burn to death. Wife is a full blown hottie of doom. He cheated on her because he was obviously brain damaged. Even internet wifey found her the hottest of the hot. Bad things ensue when crispy wife astrally projects and offs people. Is the awesome.
John(holy crap not one but two) Carpenter (Escape from NY, The Fog): Cigarette Burns: 4/5
This one was a bit out there. It was creepy and I liked it. Guy goes out to find the worst, most evil movie ever. The badness ensues when he finds it. The story had a high Whisky Tango Foxtrot factor. I enjoyed it. Well cast, directed and acted.
Tobe (Hey...nice chainsaw) Hooper (Texas Chainsaw Massacre...the original bitches) : Dance of the Dead:Hard bonus for me to bring it to a 5/5(wifey requests....I concur because Robert Englund is the master of ceremonies)
Great post apocalyptic nearly zombie flick. Bad bioweapon wipes out the US in bad fashion. People are anarchic. Story revolves around sex drugs and the ability to watch the dead dance naked on stage.
William Malone (New House on Haunted Hill, feardotcom) : Fair Haired Child: Wifey gives 5/5
Girl kidnapped from school and tossed into cellar as sacrifice to demon. She and demon child get along. She dies. Bad things happen to adults.
Don Coscarelli(Phantasm, Bubba ho tep...watch this one trust me): Incident on and off Mountain Road. :4/5
Killer tries to kill a survalist chick. Things go badly for the people around. Killer has an affectation for eyes. She has issues. You will enjoy.
Larry (good god look at the B's) Cohen(trust me you probably dont know or want to ... lets just say Q, a story of a feathered serpent bent on eating everyone in NY) :Pick Me Up: 5/5 due to wifey diligence.
Two killers. Multiple twists. awesome.
Pant, pant, pant. Ok MOH is done. I should be spared the lash for a couple of days(or a day). Hopefully, I will post up on the Indy horror scene in the next couple of days. Talk to everyone one of you soon.
60/70 = 6/7
If you dont have netflix and enjoy movies do me a favor. Find a female associate(it may be hard), have her kick you in the junk twice, have her log you on the internet and sign up when you are not vomitting from being kicked in the junk. This series is worth a month of rentals at video king.
B
Overall rating for MOH.
Wow...two killers. Interesting twists. Liked it . You should definitely check it. 5/5 ala wifey
Saturday, July 26, 2008
Guest Review:Internet Wifey does horror video games.
I am reviewing the video game Condemned 2: Bloodshot. Why am I starting with number 2? Because I haven’t seen or played the first one. After playing this one, I can guarantee you that I am going to be looking for a cheap copy of it(not because it is bad, but because I’m a poor college student and everything has to be cheap before I get it).
The horror in a video game usually never gets past a level of disgusting that the Silent Hill series as well as Resident Evil have capitalized on. Warped and disfigured creatures, that can no longer, or never even were considered human run around trying to kill you, eat you or otherwise maim you. I see the allure to these games, but they never rise beyond grotesque and macabre.
Condemned 2 seems to take to real horror rather than disfigurement. The enemies are mostly human and human-like even in their most depraved states. **Spoiler warning** The story is based around Ethan Thomas, an ex-police officer turned drunkard who must face the horrors of the present day world. Gangs, insane serial killers and just about everyone in the world it seems, it would to make life hell. To make matters worse for poor Ethan, he has random blackouts where he encounters another world. In this world the buildings, the people and the crimes are all the same, except for the tar and ash.
Thick tar covers every crevice, cranny and body. You must face the people who are suffering from this tar infection. Many are simply bleeding the tar from various places in their bodies, though as you progress they become more and more tar-like, while still possessing a completely human form.
Those that do not seem affected by the tar are in fact, just as much a part of Ethan’s mind as the rest of this world. Upon their deaths, most likely vicious and unpleasant deaths, they burst into black, bleeding tar. Ethan must survive this world of his own invention before he can come back to the real world where he must hunt for Serial Killer X. There are a lot of twists along the way, including help that Ethan could never have expected to receive, and the discovery of a power that while centuries old, is rare and precious. **Spoiler End**
The way in which the bad guys are made is by far more terrifying than any disfigured zombie could be. A man bleeding tar from his eyes and mouth as he tries to wail on you is far more frightening than a zombie that just needs shot in the head. A junkie, that suddenly appears behind you, while the speakers play his stoned, high-pitched cackle in surround sound, was enough to make me want to crawl out of my skin and see if I could fit beneath the couch. The tar pitched world that exists in Ethan’s own mind draws on the terror of the world that Ethan truly lives In at first and then becomes more and more depraved, expanding so far as to hang man-like beasts from the ceiling who hide in giant balls. They only open when you are close enough to be grabbed, choked and bitten. The vision of that wide, disjointed mouth gaping at me was enough to give me nightmares for days.
It was the terrifying, almost human aspect of this game that made me want to stop playing, and yet that same aspect made me have to finish. The plot was great, the voice acting was fitting to each character and the bad guys of both worlds are as memorable as they come.
Rating: 5/5 You just can’t find a better game that instills fear with a great storyline.
The horror in a video game usually never gets past a level of disgusting that the Silent Hill series as well as Resident Evil have capitalized on. Warped and disfigured creatures, that can no longer, or never even were considered human run around trying to kill you, eat you or otherwise maim you. I see the allure to these games, but they never rise beyond grotesque and macabre.
Condemned 2 seems to take to real horror rather than disfigurement. The enemies are mostly human and human-like even in their most depraved states. **Spoiler warning** The story is based around Ethan Thomas, an ex-police officer turned drunkard who must face the horrors of the present day world. Gangs, insane serial killers and just about everyone in the world it seems, it would to make life hell. To make matters worse for poor Ethan, he has random blackouts where he encounters another world. In this world the buildings, the people and the crimes are all the same, except for the tar and ash.
Thick tar covers every crevice, cranny and body. You must face the people who are suffering from this tar infection. Many are simply bleeding the tar from various places in their bodies, though as you progress they become more and more tar-like, while still possessing a completely human form.
Those that do not seem affected by the tar are in fact, just as much a part of Ethan’s mind as the rest of this world. Upon their deaths, most likely vicious and unpleasant deaths, they burst into black, bleeding tar. Ethan must survive this world of his own invention before he can come back to the real world where he must hunt for Serial Killer X. There are a lot of twists along the way, including help that Ethan could never have expected to receive, and the discovery of a power that while centuries old, is rare and precious. **Spoiler End**
The way in which the bad guys are made is by far more terrifying than any disfigured zombie could be. A man bleeding tar from his eyes and mouth as he tries to wail on you is far more frightening than a zombie that just needs shot in the head. A junkie, that suddenly appears behind you, while the speakers play his stoned, high-pitched cackle in surround sound, was enough to make me want to crawl out of my skin and see if I could fit beneath the couch. The tar pitched world that exists in Ethan’s own mind draws on the terror of the world that Ethan truly lives In at first and then becomes more and more depraved, expanding so far as to hang man-like beasts from the ceiling who hide in giant balls. They only open when you are close enough to be grabbed, choked and bitten. The vision of that wide, disjointed mouth gaping at me was enough to give me nightmares for days.
It was the terrifying, almost human aspect of this game that made me want to stop playing, and yet that same aspect made me have to finish. The plot was great, the voice acting was fitting to each character and the bad guys of both worlds are as memorable as they come.
Rating: 5/5 You just can’t find a better game that instills fear with a great storyline.
Thursday, July 24, 2008
Halloween, Rob Zombie, 2007
Hmmm. Where to start?
Rob Zombie is a shock rocker. He is a niche artist who, I feel, has a musical talent(of course my internet wife also says I have no taste so take that with a hefty grain of salt). He had some interesting videos as he was coming up through the ranks of MTV(you know when they actually played videos as opposed to reality TV). This, of course, led to his directorial debut with House of a 1000 Corpses. I was not fond of that movie. That movie had a sequel which I was even less fond of. That is impressive. The Devils Rejects actually has a unique place with me. I purchased it on pay per view through my local cable provider. I then did not complete the movie. Perhaps, there is some unbelievable nuance that I missed in the last half hour. I know this is unlikely. My God(goddess, shrub, whatever) you might say. What kind of movie person are you to cast aspersions at a film without watching all of it? Well, frankly, I am an asshole. Deal with it. I can cast judgement faster than a wink of an eye if I feel like it. Secondly, I have watch some shitty movies in my days. I watched Uwe Bolls House of the Dead(Uwe is going to be a special review) 3 times. The later 2 times were because I couldn't believe what I watched the first time. For me to turn off a movie it must touch me in a special way. Devils Rejects did this by making me not care in the slightest about any of the characters. They were all scumbags, even the good guys. I hated everything associated with the Devils Rejects. From Ginger Lynn Allen to Sheri Moon Zombie(A to Z get it?) I couldn't stand any character in the film.
Where is this long winded exposition going, you god amongst men? you might ask. Simple. Imagine my look when it was announced that the man who had gone 0 for 2 in his last at bats was going to be writing and directing Halloween. As I had said in my last post, Halloween was my first Horror movie. It was that special person that you lost your innocence with(though to be fair I remember the name of the movie). It was a special friend. As I said, it is a comfy life preserver. A favorite pair of jeans. A number of other similes and metaphors. The man who had decided that putting Diamond Dallas Page in a movie was a good idea was going to be writing and directing a remake made my skin crawl. Oh...and I hate remakes. This is almost without fail. Very rarely does a remake actually improve on the original. I like the new Dawn of the Dead...it did improve look wise on the original but it did lose some of the social impact. I thought 1982s"The Thing" was much better than the original The Thing from Another World. We now live in a world of remakes. That rant will be for another time, however. So...anyhow... Rob Zombie was going to take my first and favorite and remake it. He was going to WRITE it... how you might ask? Why you might ask? I actually asked these things repeatedly and loudly.
Mr. Zombie thought that the first movie was to short I guess. He decided to go into something that I have read is a bad idea. He decided to tell the story of why Michael Myers was such a bad guy. Like most of the bad things that happen in Mr. Zombie's films, it is because of white trash. I believe that Mr. Zombie has a serious issue with white trash. Both House and Rejects focused heavily on the evils that are white trash. This movie hammers it home.
A quick summary so that you do not need to watch it(or you have drank the memories away). Mom is a stripper. Step dad is an unemployed drunk. Big sis is a whore(or slut...I can never tell the two apart). Mikey is at that tender age when his mind is on only one thing(homicide to quote Wednesday Addams). He has started by torturing animals(as this was obviously researched heavily by Mr. Zombie...all good serial killers kill animals first). He then gets bullied and abused by all of the fam except momma who loves her special boy. This leads him to offing everyone. The first Halloween had a body count of 4. By the time Mikey is put away for killing his sister he has met this goal and will keep going. Yes ladies and gentleman...he kills 4 people before becoming the hulking slow walking mass murder(hell he was only 12 I think). We get introduced to Doctor Loomis(played by Malcolm Mcdowell, I feel for Malcolm, he really has let himself go since the Wing Commander video game). Needless to say the special boy is locked away in an asylum for adults(because that is logical as hell) where he is befriended by a nice staff person played by Danny Trejo(who needs to run the next time Mr. Zombie approaches with a script). Eventually, we see the snapping point and Michael is able to break out to kill his baby sister.
Now, I wish to do an aside right about here. In the original, we had a 8 year old in a clown mask kill one person then get locked up. The escape for Michael was never shown other than him stealing the car and getting back to Haddonfield(oh and he offed one person on the road that would be 2, 2 deaths Ah ha ha ha). Here we have 45 or so minutes of "why is Mikey such a broken person...poor Mikey". Yes...I typed that correctly. We are being allowed to feel compasion for the creature that the original Doctor Loomis called EVIL. Another bit is the gratuitous use of stuff. An associate said there are lots of things that can be gratuitous. Nudity, I am pro gratuitous nudity. Violence, sure in the right movie or context, gratuitous violence is good. Rape, no no no no no. There is no movie where someone should say, "hey we need a good rape scene to liven this movie up." Some movies require rape(the Accused, Once Were Warriors, hell I will even give it to Tears of the Sun) as it shows the horror or progresses the story. Halloween actually has a gratuitous forced sex scene. It was at this moment that I was screaming at my computer monitor "you have got to be fucking kidding me!!!"
Ok..sorry got a little carried away. Where was I? Oh yes, we had spent 45-60 minutes showing why Mikey was so bad. Then the movie Halloween begins. Yes...the original though heavily edited with more twists and deaths and boobs. Because, as anyone knows, the original just wasn't spicy enough. They killed Loomis. They beat the shit out of Laurie Strode. They killed EVERYONE. Lauries mom and dad...dead. Lauries bestest friends in the world...dead. Doctor Loomis...FUCKING DEAD. The rewrite was just unbelievable.
So what do I feel about Halloween ala Zombie. I was going to attempt to sum up my feelings using Mr. Zombies own works. It was A Great American Nightmare. He is Scum of the Earth. I will stop. I really wished to drive to Connecticut and express my views to the director. He took my old friend and beat him. He then sodomized him with a grizzly bear(yes that was not the bear doing the deed. It was Zombie using the bear as the implement). Zombie got drunk and then smacked my old friend on the ass and walked away giggling at the prospect of perhaps doing Halloween 2-10. The amount of hate I have for this movie is palpable. I can honestly say that it is one of the worst pieces of Horror ever. It wasn't scary. It wasn't funny. Zombie took the mystery that was Michael Myers and turned it into awe...poor Mikey. If Hollywood does read blogs, please pay attention to this. You must not allow Mr. Zombie to write another movie.
Oh sure...there were actors and performances. There was plot. You know what? I don't care. I hated this movie.
Thank you.
(Rating -50 out of 50. This is not a sliding scale and it is not negotiable. This is for entertainment value only. Not valid in 48 out of 50 states or scoring tables.)
Rob Zombie is a shock rocker. He is a niche artist who, I feel, has a musical talent(of course my internet wife also says I have no taste so take that with a hefty grain of salt). He had some interesting videos as he was coming up through the ranks of MTV(you know when they actually played videos as opposed to reality TV). This, of course, led to his directorial debut with House of a 1000 Corpses. I was not fond of that movie. That movie had a sequel which I was even less fond of. That is impressive. The Devils Rejects actually has a unique place with me. I purchased it on pay per view through my local cable provider. I then did not complete the movie. Perhaps, there is some unbelievable nuance that I missed in the last half hour. I know this is unlikely. My God(goddess, shrub, whatever) you might say. What kind of movie person are you to cast aspersions at a film without watching all of it? Well, frankly, I am an asshole. Deal with it. I can cast judgement faster than a wink of an eye if I feel like it. Secondly, I have watch some shitty movies in my days. I watched Uwe Bolls House of the Dead(Uwe is going to be a special review) 3 times. The later 2 times were because I couldn't believe what I watched the first time. For me to turn off a movie it must touch me in a special way. Devils Rejects did this by making me not care in the slightest about any of the characters. They were all scumbags, even the good guys. I hated everything associated with the Devils Rejects. From Ginger Lynn Allen to Sheri Moon Zombie(A to Z get it?) I couldn't stand any character in the film.
Where is this long winded exposition going, you god amongst men? you might ask. Simple. Imagine my look when it was announced that the man who had gone 0 for 2 in his last at bats was going to be writing and directing Halloween. As I had said in my last post, Halloween was my first Horror movie. It was that special person that you lost your innocence with(though to be fair I remember the name of the movie). It was a special friend. As I said, it is a comfy life preserver. A favorite pair of jeans. A number of other similes and metaphors. The man who had decided that putting Diamond Dallas Page in a movie was a good idea was going to be writing and directing a remake made my skin crawl. Oh...and I hate remakes. This is almost without fail. Very rarely does a remake actually improve on the original. I like the new Dawn of the Dead...it did improve look wise on the original but it did lose some of the social impact. I thought 1982s"The Thing" was much better than the original The Thing from Another World. We now live in a world of remakes. That rant will be for another time, however. So...anyhow... Rob Zombie was going to take my first and favorite and remake it. He was going to WRITE it... how you might ask? Why you might ask? I actually asked these things repeatedly and loudly.
Mr. Zombie thought that the first movie was to short I guess. He decided to go into something that I have read is a bad idea. He decided to tell the story of why Michael Myers was such a bad guy. Like most of the bad things that happen in Mr. Zombie's films, it is because of white trash. I believe that Mr. Zombie has a serious issue with white trash. Both House and Rejects focused heavily on the evils that are white trash. This movie hammers it home.
A quick summary so that you do not need to watch it(or you have drank the memories away). Mom is a stripper. Step dad is an unemployed drunk. Big sis is a whore(or slut...I can never tell the two apart). Mikey is at that tender age when his mind is on only one thing(homicide to quote Wednesday Addams). He has started by torturing animals(as this was obviously researched heavily by Mr. Zombie...all good serial killers kill animals first). He then gets bullied and abused by all of the fam except momma who loves her special boy. This leads him to offing everyone. The first Halloween had a body count of 4. By the time Mikey is put away for killing his sister he has met this goal and will keep going. Yes ladies and gentleman...he kills 4 people before becoming the hulking slow walking mass murder(hell he was only 12 I think). We get introduced to Doctor Loomis(played by Malcolm Mcdowell, I feel for Malcolm, he really has let himself go since the Wing Commander video game). Needless to say the special boy is locked away in an asylum for adults(because that is logical as hell) where he is befriended by a nice staff person played by Danny Trejo(who needs to run the next time Mr. Zombie approaches with a script). Eventually, we see the snapping point and Michael is able to break out to kill his baby sister.
Now, I wish to do an aside right about here. In the original, we had a 8 year old in a clown mask kill one person then get locked up. The escape for Michael was never shown other than him stealing the car and getting back to Haddonfield(oh and he offed one person on the road that would be 2, 2 deaths Ah ha ha ha). Here we have 45 or so minutes of "why is Mikey such a broken person...poor Mikey". Yes...I typed that correctly. We are being allowed to feel compasion for the creature that the original Doctor Loomis called EVIL. Another bit is the gratuitous use of stuff. An associate said there are lots of things that can be gratuitous. Nudity, I am pro gratuitous nudity. Violence, sure in the right movie or context, gratuitous violence is good. Rape, no no no no no. There is no movie where someone should say, "hey we need a good rape scene to liven this movie up." Some movies require rape(the Accused, Once Were Warriors, hell I will even give it to Tears of the Sun) as it shows the horror or progresses the story. Halloween actually has a gratuitous forced sex scene. It was at this moment that I was screaming at my computer monitor "you have got to be fucking kidding me!!!"
Ok..sorry got a little carried away. Where was I? Oh yes, we had spent 45-60 minutes showing why Mikey was so bad. Then the movie Halloween begins. Yes...the original though heavily edited with more twists and deaths and boobs. Because, as anyone knows, the original just wasn't spicy enough. They killed Loomis. They beat the shit out of Laurie Strode. They killed EVERYONE. Lauries mom and dad...dead. Lauries bestest friends in the world...dead. Doctor Loomis...FUCKING DEAD. The rewrite was just unbelievable.
So what do I feel about Halloween ala Zombie. I was going to attempt to sum up my feelings using Mr. Zombies own works. It was A Great American Nightmare. He is Scum of the Earth. I will stop. I really wished to drive to Connecticut and express my views to the director. He took my old friend and beat him. He then sodomized him with a grizzly bear(yes that was not the bear doing the deed. It was Zombie using the bear as the implement). Zombie got drunk and then smacked my old friend on the ass and walked away giggling at the prospect of perhaps doing Halloween 2-10. The amount of hate I have for this movie is palpable. I can honestly say that it is one of the worst pieces of Horror ever. It wasn't scary. It wasn't funny. Zombie took the mystery that was Michael Myers and turned it into awe...poor Mikey. If Hollywood does read blogs, please pay attention to this. You must not allow Mr. Zombie to write another movie.
Oh sure...there were actors and performances. There was plot. You know what? I don't care. I hated this movie.
Thank you.
(Rating -50 out of 50. This is not a sliding scale and it is not negotiable. This is for entertainment value only. Not valid in 48 out of 50 states or scoring tables.)
Sunday, July 20, 2008
Halloween, John Carpenter, 1978
In my first post, I discussed my love of the horror genre. I discussed how I became enamoured by the monster movie at a very young age. Then, like many teenagers my views became different. I had a life changing experience that took me away from childish things. I had hit puberty and became a man.
This experience was John Carpenter's Halloween. I know I had some people going on that intro paragraph. I wanted to take people away from real horror and put it back into celluloid. Halloween, as many might say, was the beginning of the slasher genre. It had the man who could not be killed. The beginnings of the rules of horror movies(ala Scream) started here. It had the music, the tone and the setting that would be duplicated right up until today. There were jump moments, fake outs, and true horror with very limited gore. After Halloween, we would see an eventual ramping up of the gore and the loss of the tone.
For those who have not seen this glorious piece of cinema, I shall do a brief synopsis. 1963, a little kid kills his sister after she has had a tumble with her boyfriend. This is tragic and terrible and it happens in suburbia which makes it even worse. Kid ends up institutionalized. 15 years later, kid is grown into a psycho and breaks out. He goes home to his suburbia. Death ensues. He is chased by a doctor who has been his case worker. Doctor swears he is evil incarnate. Come to find out that the girl he is chasing is his long lost sister. He kills a guy on the way out and 3 of the heroines(survivor chick) friends. ------------spoilers--------------
He gets tossed out a window...but he disappears only to come back in a half dozen sequels.
Ok. By this day and age, we have seen this story a dozen times(more like a thousand). You have to remember this was 1978. This was not the common everyday horror movie. Eventually, we would run the gammut of slashers from the revenant style of Michael and Jason, to the supernatural of Freddy. All of them targetting sexually active teens who were all far from wholesome aside from the survivor chick. All would die horribly and the fear went away.
The review I give is horribly tainted by my love for the movie. All reviewers try to be objective. It really is difficult. I myself am subjective as hell. I am simply very up front about it. I can be critical though of the things that I love. So here it goes, Halloween 1978 was awesome and ground breaking. Damn...that didn't last long. Ok... lets see. The movie(like most) dates itself. Very rarely do you hear the terms "timeless classic" when referred to by horror movies. Jamie Lee Curtis is good as our survivor girl. She luckily dodged the scream queen bullet with this being one of her first roles. Donald Pleasance is very good as the doctor who is there to toss about psychobabble and words of wisdom on EVIL. The villain...well what can you possibly say is wrong with Michael Myers. He is an indomitable force. He cannot be stopped. He is evil. He has no soul and kills mercilessly with no thought other than where to hide the bodies for maximum fear of the survivor girl.
The setting of Haddonfield is wonderful. I believe the reason this movie worked so well was that it brought this horror into a suburban town. Death and violence was typically reserved for dark dank castles, rural areas or the like. Isolation was key. Now the slashing could take place on a nice city block.
Carpenters direction is wonderful. His musical score is iconic. There is a reason that he is one of the Masters of Horror(which will be reviewed at some point guaranteed)
I will always have a special place in my heart for Halloween. It doesn't have the same impact on me today that it did back so many years ago. Today, its like revisting an old friend. It is a nice comfy life preserver in the endless sea of shit that is the current horror genre. I still will toss it in the DVD player and blast it on 6 or 7 around Halloween. Hell, my ring tone for texts is the theme. Let me tell you, getting a text at 2 AM when you arent concious and hearing the theme by Carpenter really does get your attention.
I sound a touch like the grumpy old man yelling at the kids about back in my day. I know this. This is to be expected. At least I am not telling people to get off my lawn.
10 out of 5 stars (My rating scale is a sliding scale based on euclydian geometry, astrology and a bit of bias for this being the most awesome movie ever)
This experience was John Carpenter's Halloween. I know I had some people going on that intro paragraph. I wanted to take people away from real horror and put it back into celluloid. Halloween, as many might say, was the beginning of the slasher genre. It had the man who could not be killed. The beginnings of the rules of horror movies(ala Scream) started here. It had the music, the tone and the setting that would be duplicated right up until today. There were jump moments, fake outs, and true horror with very limited gore. After Halloween, we would see an eventual ramping up of the gore and the loss of the tone.
For those who have not seen this glorious piece of cinema, I shall do a brief synopsis. 1963, a little kid kills his sister after she has had a tumble with her boyfriend. This is tragic and terrible and it happens in suburbia which makes it even worse. Kid ends up institutionalized. 15 years later, kid is grown into a psycho and breaks out. He goes home to his suburbia. Death ensues. He is chased by a doctor who has been his case worker. Doctor swears he is evil incarnate. Come to find out that the girl he is chasing is his long lost sister. He kills a guy on the way out and 3 of the heroines(survivor chick) friends. ------------spoilers--------------
He gets tossed out a window...but he disappears only to come back in a half dozen sequels.
Ok. By this day and age, we have seen this story a dozen times(more like a thousand). You have to remember this was 1978. This was not the common everyday horror movie. Eventually, we would run the gammut of slashers from the revenant style of Michael and Jason, to the supernatural of Freddy. All of them targetting sexually active teens who were all far from wholesome aside from the survivor chick. All would die horribly and the fear went away.
The review I give is horribly tainted by my love for the movie. All reviewers try to be objective. It really is difficult. I myself am subjective as hell. I am simply very up front about it. I can be critical though of the things that I love. So here it goes, Halloween 1978 was awesome and ground breaking. Damn...that didn't last long. Ok... lets see. The movie(like most) dates itself. Very rarely do you hear the terms "timeless classic" when referred to by horror movies. Jamie Lee Curtis is good as our survivor girl. She luckily dodged the scream queen bullet with this being one of her first roles. Donald Pleasance is very good as the doctor who is there to toss about psychobabble and words of wisdom on EVIL. The villain...well what can you possibly say is wrong with Michael Myers. He is an indomitable force. He cannot be stopped. He is evil. He has no soul and kills mercilessly with no thought other than where to hide the bodies for maximum fear of the survivor girl.
The setting of Haddonfield is wonderful. I believe the reason this movie worked so well was that it brought this horror into a suburban town. Death and violence was typically reserved for dark dank castles, rural areas or the like. Isolation was key. Now the slashing could take place on a nice city block.
Carpenters direction is wonderful. His musical score is iconic. There is a reason that he is one of the Masters of Horror(which will be reviewed at some point guaranteed)
I will always have a special place in my heart for Halloween. It doesn't have the same impact on me today that it did back so many years ago. Today, its like revisting an old friend. It is a nice comfy life preserver in the endless sea of shit that is the current horror genre. I still will toss it in the DVD player and blast it on 6 or 7 around Halloween. Hell, my ring tone for texts is the theme. Let me tell you, getting a text at 2 AM when you arent concious and hearing the theme by Carpenter really does get your attention.
I sound a touch like the grumpy old man yelling at the kids about back in my day. I know this. This is to be expected. At least I am not telling people to get off my lawn.
10 out of 5 stars (My rating scale is a sliding scale based on euclydian geometry, astrology and a bit of bias for this being the most awesome movie ever)
The Beginning
What better place to start, I would suppose, then the beginning. I live in upstate New York so, for roughly 8 months of the year, we are either rain or snow bound. Spring has its nice days, Summer is beautiful and Fall is ok though short. TV was not as prevalent in my formative years. We had 3.5 channels. Point 5? You may ask. Yes, we had the basic 3 networks as well as PBS on good days. As you well imagine, this would prevent one from being to much of a couch potato. The total of my viewing was limited to about half an hour in the afternoons after school and then Saturday morning cartoons followed by Monster Movie Matinee.
That was the formation of a deep love. Warner Brothers Cartoons, Three Stooges and good old fashioned Monster Movies. I would say my affection for the horror genre developed around this time. Sure, I liked other types of films. Star Wars, Raiders of the Lost Ark, Conan the Barbarian to name a few. I like other genres, I love war movies, westerns, dramas and good comedies. My father's favorites were any movie with John Wayne or Clint Eastwood. My mother enjoyed British romances. Horror, however, was a delicious diversion. Now, I am not talking about special effects laden monstrosities, gore fests, Japanese horror, torture porn or the like. I was watching the old Universal monsters. Bela Lugosi, Boris Karloff, Lon Chaneys Junior and Senior. I was watching Godzilla, King Kong and movies about giant ants and (shudder) tarantulas.
The movies would come on at about 1PM on Saturday afternoons. I would plug in for 2 hours if my parents would allow me(chores needed to be done). So, the break between Bugs Bunny and Bela Lugosi was spent tear assing around the house or yard. I would get done and swoop in to catch the beginning. It was an interesting splash screen with blacks, and blues with a castle silhouetted. Flashes of lighting would illuminate the screen. I always hoped for something good. Dracula, The Bride of Frankenstein, The Mummy were some of my favorites. Occasionally, I would get a Hammer films production which would have more cleavage than a corset showroom floor(god blessem now...at the time I was mildly oblivious to them). Other times, I would get the glorious films of the atomic era. Giant Bugs, People, or Lizards would cause mayhem on what ever metropolis was near by. The army would come and blow the hell out of them.
All of this finally led up to the moment of truth. I was 13 or 14 and saw Halloween for the first time. It had come out years before and we had gotten a VCR. By all of the deities on high it was glorious. I could barely watch aspects of it at the time. I nearly fell off of my bed at the moment when Michael Myers sat up after being stabbed through the eye with the coat hanger. I was hooked. I watched every bit of horror that I could after that. The Friday the Thirteens, Halloweens, Nightmare on Elm Streets, Hellraisers were bread and butter. It didn't matter the budget. It didn't matter the antagonist or protagonist. I laughed with glee at the Friday 3D movie as the eyeball flew at the screen. I giggled at nearly all of them. Some disturbed me. Some bored me. Others, went out of their way to nauseate me. Very few of them actually scared me.
This all is going somewhere, I promise. You see, I have gone to great lengths to figure out what scares people. I would like to write a movie that actually lives up to the old promo posters from the 50s and 60s. The posters would say things like "Pregnant women and people with bad hearts should not see this movie". I have studied fear, horror, terror, and all of the other nouns associated with that gut spinning fight or flight instinct that humanity has. I want to find the buttons that trigger the little place in the back of the mind that goes from the whisper of "oh fuck, oh fuck, oh fuck" to the crescendo of "OH FUCK!OH FUCK!".
In the interim, on this small little blog, I shall discuss movies of the horror genre. These opinions are my own. I may well be harsh. I may bash the hell out of your favoritist movie. Just keep telling yourself, "Hey...this is just some guy spouting shit on the internet." That is all it is. I do promise you that I shall attempt to entertain as well as tell my views. I shall attempt to back up my opinions with tidbits that I know. I am very opinionated when it comes to horror. It needs to stir an emotion with me. This can be giggling fits of laughter(most often the case), disgust, or genuine fear(the least likely).
To start it off, I am going to be reviewing my most recent viewing and the one that got me started. I will be going through both John Carpenter's and Rob Zombie's Halloween. This will happen in the next couple of days as I am still recovering from viewing the Rob Zombie take.
Regards,
B
That was the formation of a deep love. Warner Brothers Cartoons, Three Stooges and good old fashioned Monster Movies. I would say my affection for the horror genre developed around this time. Sure, I liked other types of films. Star Wars, Raiders of the Lost Ark, Conan the Barbarian to name a few. I like other genres, I love war movies, westerns, dramas and good comedies. My father's favorites were any movie with John Wayne or Clint Eastwood. My mother enjoyed British romances. Horror, however, was a delicious diversion. Now, I am not talking about special effects laden monstrosities, gore fests, Japanese horror, torture porn or the like. I was watching the old Universal monsters. Bela Lugosi, Boris Karloff, Lon Chaneys Junior and Senior. I was watching Godzilla, King Kong and movies about giant ants and (shudder) tarantulas.
The movies would come on at about 1PM on Saturday afternoons. I would plug in for 2 hours if my parents would allow me(chores needed to be done). So, the break between Bugs Bunny and Bela Lugosi was spent tear assing around the house or yard. I would get done and swoop in to catch the beginning. It was an interesting splash screen with blacks, and blues with a castle silhouetted. Flashes of lighting would illuminate the screen. I always hoped for something good. Dracula, The Bride of Frankenstein, The Mummy were some of my favorites. Occasionally, I would get a Hammer films production which would have more cleavage than a corset showroom floor(god blessem now...at the time I was mildly oblivious to them). Other times, I would get the glorious films of the atomic era. Giant Bugs, People, or Lizards would cause mayhem on what ever metropolis was near by. The army would come and blow the hell out of them.
All of this finally led up to the moment of truth. I was 13 or 14 and saw Halloween for the first time. It had come out years before and we had gotten a VCR. By all of the deities on high it was glorious. I could barely watch aspects of it at the time. I nearly fell off of my bed at the moment when Michael Myers sat up after being stabbed through the eye with the coat hanger. I was hooked. I watched every bit of horror that I could after that. The Friday the Thirteens, Halloweens, Nightmare on Elm Streets, Hellraisers were bread and butter. It didn't matter the budget. It didn't matter the antagonist or protagonist. I laughed with glee at the Friday 3D movie as the eyeball flew at the screen. I giggled at nearly all of them. Some disturbed me. Some bored me. Others, went out of their way to nauseate me. Very few of them actually scared me.
This all is going somewhere, I promise. You see, I have gone to great lengths to figure out what scares people. I would like to write a movie that actually lives up to the old promo posters from the 50s and 60s. The posters would say things like "Pregnant women and people with bad hearts should not see this movie". I have studied fear, horror, terror, and all of the other nouns associated with that gut spinning fight or flight instinct that humanity has. I want to find the buttons that trigger the little place in the back of the mind that goes from the whisper of "oh fuck, oh fuck, oh fuck" to the crescendo of "OH FUCK!OH FUCK!".
In the interim, on this small little blog, I shall discuss movies of the horror genre. These opinions are my own. I may well be harsh. I may bash the hell out of your favoritist movie. Just keep telling yourself, "Hey...this is just some guy spouting shit on the internet." That is all it is. I do promise you that I shall attempt to entertain as well as tell my views. I shall attempt to back up my opinions with tidbits that I know. I am very opinionated when it comes to horror. It needs to stir an emotion with me. This can be giggling fits of laughter(most often the case), disgust, or genuine fear(the least likely).
To start it off, I am going to be reviewing my most recent viewing and the one that got me started. I will be going through both John Carpenter's and Rob Zombie's Halloween. This will happen in the next couple of days as I am still recovering from viewing the Rob Zombie take.
Regards,
B
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