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I’ll do my best to get 31 in.
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Sep 27, 2019 19:24
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 1. Knife + Heart (2018): This movie has some serious vibes. Aesthetically very clearly inspired by Argento, this is the story of a serial killer who preys on gay porn actors in 1979 Paris. The movie starts out very strong and has a killer soundtrack by M83, but it’s very oddly paced and drags in parts. There’s a very cool mid-credits sequence as well. 3.5/5
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Sep 30, 2019 00:59
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 Super Samhain Challenge #1: The Best Month2. Viy (1967): I was a bit skeptical of this early on, but it really picks up as our man Khoma heads off to perform last rites. There’s some very cool effects work in this and the final sequence at the church owns. 3. C.H.U.D. (1984): I think I’ve always heard of this movie in the context of “so bad it’s good” or just “it’s very bad” but I don’t agree. It’s certainly not a great movie and has its flaws but it’s fun. I like the monster design and the NRC guy is an appropriately dickish villain. Also very strange to see a young John Goodman in a small role.
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Oct 3, 2019 12:40
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4. Happy Death Day (2017): I had a lot of fun watching this. You’d expect a Groundhog Day-style movie to be stale at this point, and it does indulge in a few of the cliches of the genre, but it felt fresh. Loses points for having a character mention Groundhog Day towards the end.
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Oct 4, 2019 04:16
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 5. The Ranger (2018): This movie shows some promise at the start, but descends into pretty generic slasher territory. All the characters suck rear end and the villain’s gimmick of quoting park regulations is too goofy to be scary, which isn’t inherently a bad thing, but didn’t really seem to fit this movie. If you want punk rock themed horror, go for Green Room or Return of the Living Dead instead.
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Oct 4, 2019 18:51
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 6. Candyman (1992): I had no idea going into this that it had a Philip Glass score. It’s a v good score. Candyman touches on a lot of interesting themes: urban decay, race in America, folklore and urban legend, and academics being huge assholes. We follow a pair of grad students researching the legend of Candyman, who, in a shocking turn of events, turns out to be real. I had expected this to be more of a slasher than it is, so the psychological elements were a nice surprise. The set design and the appearance and overall presence of Candyman were highlights. It has some minor flaws but I really liked it.
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Oct 7, 2019 01:54
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 7. Scream (1996): Scream absolutely lives up to its reputation. The opening sequence with Drew Barrymore is incredible. The cast is great. Did not know Henry Winkler was in this. The meta stuff got to be a bit much at a couple of points but overall it was great.
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Oct 7, 2019 04:25
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 8. The Wolf Man (1941): This is probably the weakest of the Universal monster movies I’ve seen (I haven’t seen a whole lot). The makeup on the Wolf Man is cool but it’s weird that he’s humanoid while Bela Lugosi’s wolf transformation appears to just be a regular wolf. Larry is also a creep. Has some good moments but kind of drags.
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Oct 8, 2019 03:55
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that fuckin bear tho
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Oct 8, 2019 04:05
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 9. Ravenous (1999): This movie rules but it’s pretty weird. For stretches it plays as a black comedy but spends most of the second and third act as straight horror. The cast is stacked, good performances all around. I really liked the score and the grainy look of the movie. The old west is a great setting for horror. I’ve been interested in the concept of the Wendigo for a while now and this really hit the spot.
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Oct 9, 2019 03:10
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Super Samhain Challenge 2: Dead and Buried Sid Haig 10. House of 1000 Corpses (2003): This movie is a bit of a mess but, having not seen a Rob Zombie film before this, this feels exactly like how I would expect a Rob Zombie film to feel. I liked Captain Spaulding as a character and would have liked just a bit more of him and a bit less of the murder family. None of the murder family were particularly interesting except maybe Rob Zombie’s wife. The victims were also pretty boring. The gore was pretty good and I liked the idea of the cutaways but they didn’t always work. Probably a failure overall, but an interesting one. Alfred P. Pseudonym fucked around with this message at 02:26 on Oct 11, 2019 |
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Oct 10, 2019 03:01
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The October thread owns because now I know that Simeon Rice directed a horror movie 
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Oct 10, 2019 22:27
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 11. The Devil’s Rejects: I wasn’t too high on House of 1000 Corpses, but this was solid. It trades the twisted carnival atmosphere of the first movie for a more western feel and it works a bit better here. The characters are more fleshed out and though there’s less gore, the violence feels more brutal. The Freebird scene was tight.
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Oct 11, 2019 02:33
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 12. Insidious (2010): Holy gently caress. Usually when I watch horror movies I enjoy them but maintain a certain detachment from the events of the movie. That didn’t happen with Insidious. Once spooky poo poo started happening, I was all in and it creeped me out. All the haunted house stuff was spooky as hell. The bit where Rose Byrne is following the mysterious child through the house legit reminds me of nightmares I’ve had. Things drop off a bit when the paranormal investigators show up but the astral projection sequence is great. This movie just worked for me.
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Oct 12, 2019 04:25
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 13. Q - The Winged Serpent (1982) This was pretty fun. It was wild to see Michael Moriarty as a lowlife, since I mainly know him from the early seasons of Law & Order. The monster shots were cool and the gore was solid. Just a fun creature flick. Super Samhain Challenge #3: Horror Noire 14. Tales from the Hood (1995): This movie slaps. The rare anthology movie where the frame story is interesting. Not all of the stories hit (the one with David Alan Grier isn’t great) but the ones that do hit hard. The last segment in particular is pretty intense. Strong recommend.  15. Children of the Corn (1984): This movie kinda sucks. It takes way too long to get to the action. The adult characters aren’t very interesting and the child characters who should have been interesting, Isaac and Malachi, were poorly acted. The climax was kinda cool, but this movie didn’t do much for me. Having now seen this, I’m absolutely puzzled at how many sequels it spawned.
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Oct 14, 2019 04:49
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Super Samhain Challenge #4: Inktober One of the Inktober prompts is “Treasure” so I went with a DVD that I bought for a dollar from a Hollywood Video that was going out of business in 2010 and never got around to watching until now:  16. Jolly Roger: Massacre at Cutter’s Cove (2005): The Asylum brings us this film about an undead pirate who’s back to take revenge on the founding fathers of a small coastal town who wronged him in a past life. If this sounds familiar, that’s because it’s basically a ripoff of The Fog, but with none of the atmosphere, tension, or anything else that makes The Fog good. I can usually look past bad production values if the story and acting are solid but they are not here. Even at 80 minutes, the script feels padded out. Don’t get me started about the scene where Jolly Roger goes to a strip club. Don’t watch this y’all.
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Oct 16, 2019 03:26
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 17. Your Vice is a Locked Room and Only I Have the Key (1972): This is a pretty decent giallo. It takes some time to get going and doesn’t really pick up until the final act, but that final act is pretty good. There is a good creepy cat in this. Also the cat is named Satan. Super Samhain Challenge #5: Tourist Trap 18. Lupt (2018): I was curious if Indian horror movies had musical numbers in them. This one has one for the opening credits. Sadly, it’s the best part of the movie. Harsh is a cutthroat businessman who starts having hallucinations due to lack of sleep, so he decides to take a vacation with his family who he never spends any time with. During their road trip, the car breaks down and weird spooky things happen. I had a hard time with this movie. The characters felt very broad and one dimensional. The son makes annoying jokes. The dad is distant. The daughter, uh, has asthma? I dunno, it felt like a 90s sitcom family. I started to nod off a couple of times toward the end of this. I will say the ending was kind of interesting but I wouldn’t recommend this.  19. 31 (2016): This is the third Rob Zombie film I’ve watched for this challenge, and I’m starting to develop a fondness for his style. I’m sure others have made this observation, but he’s kind of like a horror version of Tarantino in that he has a distinctive look and feel to his movies and is also clearly paying homage to the B movies he grew up with. I enjoyed this movie quite a bit. A group of carnies on the road to their next gig are abducted and released into a sort of labyrinth to be hunted for the amusement of some people dressed up like old timey European aristocrats. It’s similar to The Running Man in some ways, but definitely has a Rob Zombie feel to it (the hunters include a dwarf dressed as Hitler and a pair of chainsaw wielding clowns, among others). The final villain, Doomhead, is the highlight of the movie thanks to a good performance by Richard Brake. I enjoyed this quite a bit. Solid recommend. Alfred P. Pseudonym fucked around with this message at 17:05 on Oct 19, 2019 |
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Oct 19, 2019 16:37
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Sometimes I feel like I’m the only person who didn’t dig the Suspiria remake that much.
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Oct 21, 2019 22:19
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Super Samhain Challenge #6: Sometimes They Come Back 20. Son of Frankenstein (1939): This is not as good as Frankenstein or Bride of Frankenstein, but there’s a lot to like here. A very good Bela Lugosi performance, excellent set design and lighting, Basil Rathbone coming more and more unhinged as he keeps throwing darts at his dartboard. But the monster just isn’t as interesting as in the previous films. Definitely worth a watch.
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Oct 22, 2019 03:23
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 21. The Ghost of Frankenstein (1942): Amazingly, Frankenstein’s monster has somehow managed to survive the climax of Son of Frankenstein, in which he was thrown into an 800 degree sulfur pit. Though he was so disfigured by the incident that he now resembles Lon Chaney Jr. instead of Boris Karloff. Ygor and the monster manage to find yet another Dr. Frankenstein and some people die. This franchise is starting to get a bit stale. But I wanted to watch this one before getting to... Super Samhain Challenge #7: Monster Mash-up 22. Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man (1943): What a disappointment. This could have been pretty good if it was just a Wolf Man story, as the first half focusing on Chaney’s character (Larry Talbot/Wolf Man, not the Frankenstein monster, heh) is the strongest part of the movie. Wolf Man wants to die but he can’t, so he goes searching for the diary of Dr. Frankenstein. The Frankenstein stuff feels a bit tacked on. The monster, now played by Bela Lugosi, is hardly in the movie. The fight billed in the poster doesn’t happen until the final five minutes of the movie and it’s not that exciting. This is skippable.
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Oct 23, 2019 04:03
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Egbert Souse posted:Universal did a real hatchet job on the film prior to release, cutting a lot of scenes with the Monster because he had dialogue. Apparently, preview audiences didn't appreciate the Hungarian accent, even though it's consistent with the end of Ghost of Frankenstein. But that's why there's a lot of continuity issues. Yeah I had assumed the end of Ghost of Frankenstein was why Bela Lugosi was playing the monster, but they seemed to just retcon that whole movie.
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Oct 23, 2019 17:24
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Super Samhain Challenge #8: Happy Holidays 23. Black Christmas (1974): I’m sure everyone here knows it already, but this is a really good slasher. The killer is very creepy, in part because we never get a good look at him. The long shots at the very end of the movie are very unsettling. This is also one of the most Canadian movies I’ve seen and parts of it almost remind me of Fargo in the juxtaposition of funny (to me) accents and politeness with horrific murders. But the horror is very effective. Good movie.
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Oct 24, 2019 03:04
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Super Samhain Challenge #9: Hackers 24. The Lawnmower Man (Director’s Cut) (1992): I knew I was onboard with this movie five minutes in when a chimp in a VR helmet steals a guard’s gun and shoots him. This seems to have directly inspired Luc Besson’s Lucy but with more of a Flowers for Algernon feel for a lot of it. Pierce Brosnan plays a scientist who is researching virtual reality as a means to educate and improve cognitive ability. He takes on his mentally disabled gardener, played by Jeff Fahey, as a research subject off the books and things get wild. The early 90’s cgi looks goofy and is reminiscent of The Mind’s Eye (https://youtu.be/VEWeP2YPKzo) but I think if it were more realistic the effect would be less unsettling. Some of the deaths in this are pretty wild. It has a bit of fat on it, as director’s cuts often do, but it’s pretty enjoyable.
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Oct 25, 2019 04:37
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Super Samhain Challenge #10: Navel Gazing 25. One Cut of the Dead (2017): I hadn’t heard of this before this month but the effusive praise in this thread got me to check it out. I’ll just echo what everyone else said: go in blind. Really fun film, strong recommend.
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Oct 26, 2019 05:53
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 26. The Lighthouse (2019): This is fantastic. Not a whole lot of scares in this movie but the ones that are there are effective. Willem Dafoe is great as the Sea Captain from The Simpsons. There was more humor than I expected. This has a definite Lynchian vibe to it and I really enjoyed it. Hard recommend. Super Samhain Challenge #11: All Hail the King 27. Gerald’s Game (2017): A married couple take a trip to a lake house hoping to spice up their sexhaving and things go wrong. The wife ends up handcuffed to a bed with no one around and has to confront her inner demons while trying to stay alive to either escape or be found. I liked this movie but have mixed feelings about the ending. I think that revealing the giant from Twin Peaks to be a real guy who robbed graves was either a misstep or at the very least clumsily handled. I get that it’s meant to provide her with closure when she confronts him in the courtroom, but it still feels out of place to me. Overall it’s a really good thriller with some horror elements. Would recommend.
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Oct 27, 2019 03:57
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 28. The House of Frankenstein (1944): All your favorite monsters, together at last! Except none of them interact with one another. This is reminiscent of Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man in that it almost plays as an anthology. The first 25 minutes or so feature Dracula, who kills a guy and disappears. Then our mad scientist character finds the frozen bodies of Wolf Man and the Frankenstein monster and it plays out similarly to the previous movie, except Wolf Man doesn’t fight the monster. This had a decent amount of potential and squandered it.
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Oct 28, 2019 05:33
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Super Samhain Challenge #12: Cavalcade of Creepiness 29. XX (2017): This is pretty decent. I think the first and last segments are the strongest. The first one is a creepy tale about families that don’t communicate. The second story, about a mom preparing for her daughter’s birthday party, is the only one I disliked. The third was fine, pretty standard young people in nature stuff. The last one was cool, kind of like a sequel to Rosemary’s Baby. It’s not a great movie, but worth a watch. Alfred P. Pseudonym fucked around with this message at 03:42 on Oct 29, 2019 |
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Oct 29, 2019 03:12
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Super Samhain Challenge #13: Maniac 30. House (1977): This is my first rewatch of the month and yep I still love this movie. It’s just so goofy and cheerful, even if it does get dark at times. The characters are fun, there’s a dope skeleton that dances around, the effects are weirdly stylish. The pointless side plot of the teacher coming to rescue the girls owns. I hesitate to call this a guilty pleasure, since I think it’s a genuinely good movie, but it’s so drat weird I think it kind of fits.
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Oct 30, 2019 03:52
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 31. A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night (2014): This is pretty good, but I don’t think I was in the right headspace for it. This is a slow, moody, stylish film. It’s got some great individual scenes (the first meeting between the girl and Arash is wonderful), but I didn’t have the focus to devote to it. The black and white cinematography looks great.
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Oct 31, 2019 03:17
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 32. Häxan (1922): This movie is structured a bit like a university lecture. Part of it is just scholarly discussion of folklore surrounding witchcraft and the practices of witch hunters of the Middle Ages. There’s some interesting stuff in these parts, but the meat of the movie is in the narrative segments. The most compelling is the story of an old woman accused of bewitching a printer and her subsequent torture and confession. This movie has some really cool imagery and I’ve never really seen anything quite like it.  33. The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2: This movie gets automatic points for having the first of Leatherface’s victims be a couple of deranged Longhorn fans shooting up roadsigns and making harassing phone calls on their way to Dallas for the OU-Texas game (I’m an OU alum). Dennis Hopper plays a lawman who is related to the victims from the first movie and wants revenge, but our main protagonist is a radio DJ played by Caroline Williams who hears the Longhorn fan murders over the phone. This movie is definitely much more comedic than the original, with Chop Top providing a lot of the comedy. I found myself thinking that he felt like a character who would be in House of 1000 Corpses and whaddayaknow, the same actor played Otis in that movie. Hopper disappears for long segments of the movie, which I didn’t like, but overall this was pretty fun.
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Nov 1, 2019 12:45
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