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As usual I'm just gonna watch one or movie a night, and it is mostly gonna be the random DVDs I ordered this month. Gonna be a great marathon like every year.
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Sep 30, 2023 03:58
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 Jason Lives: Friday the 13th Part VI, 1986 It is midnight, it is officially October in my time zone. The marathon can begin. And I'm starting off with where the Friday the 13th movies really began. It took six movies for the Friday the 13th movies to become what they are famous for. This is where we get the undead Jason that is an unstoppable killing machine. All movies up until now, he either wasn't the killer or he was just this tough guy that paramedics failed to check if he was dead or not. In this movie he quite literally rises from the grave and just murders people. He murders so many that the movie just has to keep introducing new characters for him to murder as it runs out of people to kill. It is glorious. This is a truly banger start for this month-long run of movies leading up to Halloween.
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Oct 1, 2023 01:21
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 Alice Sweet Alice, 1976 The second movie of the night. While 80s slashers were all about kills and body count, the 70s movies that paved the way for them were all about the atmosphere and build up. Alice Sweet Alice is a movie I've been meaning to watch for ages and it didn't disappoint. It is pure 70s in look and feel. The kills are few and far between, but there's not a single boring moment between them. It is all about the setting in this one. Catholicism is creepy as gently caress, Christianity and religion at large is creepy as gently caress, so murders happening in that community is going to add to that horror. I'm not going to go into details about the plot as the look and feel is what the whole movie is about. The creepy mask of the killer, the predatory feel towards children vibe you get from the priest, and more than a feel from the fat landlord, the seemingly sociopathy of Alice, just everything of this film got creepiness going for it. And it is the kind that feels natural and real. I really get why some people see this as a masterpiece.
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Oct 1, 2023 03:49
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 Black Sabbath/I tre volti della paura, 1963 Finally after all these years, I have watched the iconic Italian horror movie that one of the most important and greatest bands ever took their name from. Black Sabbath is an anthology film with three stories to tell. The first is the weakest. A woman gets threatening phone calls from someone that can see her every move and tells her that she'll get strangled by dawn. It got its little twists and turns on who is actually making these calls and a kind of predictable ending after said reveal. It is by no means a bad short horror story, just that it pales next to the other two. The second one is what got me excited. An old school horror story with horror legend Boris Karloff as a vampire. He is also the one doing the intro to the movie, telling the viewers that ghosts and vampires also go to the cinema and the audience should be aware that they will be among them in the movie theater. Boris Karloff as a vampire got to be his most iconic role since he played Frankenstein's monster in those old Universal Picture movies. He is so perfect in the role. We are talking real old school vampires out of the folk tales here. Filthy and haggard looking. He feels like a legit threat to everyone around him. This story just straight up excited me and I can't believe it took me this long to finally watch this iconic masterpiece. The last story is also a lot of fun. A nurse is called to prepare the dead body of an old rich lady that dedicated all her life and money to spirit seances. Her face frozen in a twisted grimace with her eyes wide open. The nurse steals a ring from her finger and things don't go well for her in the darkness of the night after she returns home. Just like the English name of the movie gave us the name of one iconic band, it is worth mentioning that the underground death/thrash metal Deceased used a still of the dead old lady as the cover art for their debut album. If the first story had been as great as the following two other ones, this would have been the perfect classic horror movie. I'm so glad to have finally watched it. Hot Dog Day #89 fucked around with this message at 02:02 on Oct 2, 2023 |
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Oct 2, 2023 01:53
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 Invaders from Mars, 1956 I love a good 1950s sci-fi horror. Well, most of these are by no means actually good movies, but good in those super cheesy and outdated ways. Normally these films are in black and white, but this one is in color and it really added to the sci-fi rays and stuff towards the end. Invaders from Mars starts with some kid observing your classic flying saucer landing at night and his father gets sucked into the ground at the sandpit where the saucer disappeared. He returns early next morning with a mark on his neck and a different nasty personality. Same goes for the cops that investigate the sandpit. No one seems to quite believe the boy and more people turn up with marks on their necks and act mind controlled. Luckily for the boy that he runs into the right scientists and soon the military is involved. This movie got just about every 50s sci-fi horror trope down, including my favorite, scientists and military people just standing around talking about what ray these aliens must have. The acting is quite hammy at times like you'd expect from this kind of movie, in you get the good ol' 50s "gee whiz" acting from the boy especially. But outside that, he isn't bad for a child actor. Invaders from Mars just hit all the sweet spots for me when it comes to the cliches I want from this kind of movie, so I loved just about every second, including the lack of any aliens until the very end. And when you actually get to the aliens, the use of color pays off. This is everything you want and expect from a very cheesy 1950 sci-fi horror.
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Oct 3, 2023 01:26
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 Angst, 1983 This one is as straightforward as it gets. Psychopath gets out of prison after stabbing his mom, turns out he has issues and wants to hurt people. You don't get a more basic plot than that. What makes this a great movie is the execution of the plot. This is very much a movie in the spirit of Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer and Maniac in that you are following the perspective of the serial killer. He wants to torture and kill, and go in great detail about his hosed up childhood and how and why he just want to see people suffer and die. We hear his internal monologue the entire movie told in the past precedence. If anything, I'd compare this to A Clockwork Orange in that we are following a sadistic and selfish person presenting themselves as someone just doing what is natural to them. The angst in the title isn't just what the victims feel, but his own angst in what he is doing. Not as in angst in feeling guilt or the fear of being caught, but if their suffering went to plan and if the killings live up to his fantasies. The movie is unapologetically gruesome in his actions and there is nothing redeemable about the killer. Yet he is the main character and you get into his euphoria of wanting to do something very bad and succeeding. He breaks into a house and ends up killing a wheelchair bound and mentally challenged man, his elderly mother and adult sister. His angst is that the first two died too fast, so he goes real brutal and sexulized on the adult sister. Then the rest of the movie is about him dealing with their dead bodies. There is also a dog, but the movie resists going for shock value by having him kill or torture the dog. Instead it ends up being just as hosed up by having the innocent dog not understanding whats going on and being this spectator to the horrible acts. Angst is to me a highlight of German cinema.
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Oct 3, 2023 03:41
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 We Need to Talk About Kevin, 2011 We Need to Talk About Kevin is more psychological drama than a straight up classical thriller. It is very much a horror movie, but it is more about resentment and a study of evil than the scares. It is told through flashbacks as we see the daily life of a very broken woman facing harassment and hatred from her town. She got a son in prison and it is obvious that he murdered someone and people see her as the mother of this killer, and that this person is the titular Kevin. The flashbacks show her raising Kevin and him being a psychopath from the very start. We see that Kevin hated her from the very start already as a toddler. He is actively going out of his way already at that age to make her life a living hell. Not as in he is difficult and can't help it. He is deliberately doing it. He got everything a boy needs to grow up a happy child and she is really trying to be a good mom. That's not to say she is innocent. Kevin is very much the evil one here, but she always had some resentment of giving up her life after getting pregnant and having to deal with an absolute little poo poo of a child, so some of that had to fuel Kevin's behavior. But make no mistake that Kevin is very much the villain in this story. It doesn't help that the father do everything to ignore the obvious signs that there's something wrong with Kevin. I bring him up because he is played by John C. Reilly. That was a tiny bit distracting as he is very much associated with comedy shows like Tim and Eric Awesome Show, Great Job! and Check It Out! with Dr. Steve Brule. But not enough distracting to get in the way of the sickening tone and feel of the film. The movie builds up to showing what Kevin did and it is some pretty dark poo poo. How far can a mom's love go when facing absolute evil? It is very much a feel bad movie, but a great one at that.
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Oct 4, 2023 02:20
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 The Prowler, 1981 Nothing like a super basic early 80s slasher once in a while. Bunch of people getting stabbed and not much else going on. The killings take place during a college graduation dance in a small town. There was a double murder near the dancehall right after world war 2 and they are holding a dance again at that place 35 years later. There is a prowler dressed up in military gear killing people in the dorms and places around the dancehall. There's some mystery on how it is linked to that old double murder from way back. None of that matters too much, I'm just enjoying the basic stabbings and people dying. The effects are done by Tom Savini, so the killing looks great. There is really not that much that needs to be said about The Prowler. It is all the stuff that makes slashers enjoyable.
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Oct 5, 2023 02:38
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 The Fearless Vampire Killers, 1967 When I think of horror comedies, I don't think of Roman Polanski, yet he apparently made one. A professor obsessed with vampires travels to Transylvania with his less than intelligent assistant to rid the world of that undead scourge. He gets lucky and runs into vampires the very first night and tracks them back to a castle. A lot of the comedy is basic slapstick and that both of them are pretty incompetent, relying on what the professor knows about vampire hunting through books. The first ten minutes or so weren't that funny, but the movie gets more amusing as it goes on and there were a few legit funny jokes and scenes. But what really made me like this movie was its legit old school horror look and feel. The castle set is great and this could easily pass as a high budget Hammer Studio film if you stripped it of all the jokes and gags. Far from the funniest horror comedy, but very much a good movie if you want that old vampire movie look and feel.
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Oct 6, 2023 03:28
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 The Monster Squad, 1987 Another one I've been meaning to watch for ages. It is pretty much The Goonies fighting the classic Universal Picture monster lineup. You got Dracula, Frankenstein's monster, the wolfman, Gil-Man and the mummy. The later two are the ones with the least screen time and anything to do in the movie. They are just there to fill the classic lineup. Van Helsing tried to seal up Dracula and destroy the amulet of evil a hundred years before the movie takes place and failed. A hundred years later, a bunch of kids have a monster club and get involved in stopping Dracula from reclaiming the amulet when strange things happen all over town. I wasn't sure I would like this film that much when I started watching. I thought for my self this can't be that great of a movie despite its awesome premise since it is not considered one of the big titles of the 80s, and the fact I didn't like any of the child characters didn't help. But the movie just kept getting better as I watched and felt pretty awesome by the end. It is a very silly movie, but in a good way, and very, very 80s in every way possible. And a lot of people getting killed and even some gore, which is something you really don't see in a kids movie these days. A very fun movie and I'm glad I finally watched it. Hot Dog Day #89 fucked around with this message at 03:09 on Oct 7, 2023 |
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Oct 7, 2023 03:02
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 My Bloody Valentine, 1981 Just three nights ago, I watched the 1981 slasher The Prowler. Tonight I watched a similar 1981 slasher, My Bloody Valentine. Both movies have some past murders that serve as backdrop for the current murders going on in their respective films. Both got a killer dressed up in the gear relevant to their backgrounds. But I got to say My bloody Valentine is the superior movie of the two and close to a perfect early 80s slasher. It got way more soul and character than The Prowler. I still dig The Prowler, but you got a way more of a setting and characters in My Bloody Valentine. The small mining town, not to mention the mines, just have so much going for it that I'd almost go as far as say you could remove the horror and just make a piece of life drama about that. The Prowler has better kills due to special effects, but this has more character. I'm unsure which is the best typical non-franchise slasher on some technical level of the two, but I think I liked My Bloody Valentine way more.
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Oct 8, 2023 03:20
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 The Lodger: A Story of the London Fog, 1927 One of Alfred Hitchcock's early films from back in the silent film era. A serial killer that calls himself The Avenger is murdering women around London. A mysterious man that fits the description of the killer rents a room and acts all weird and is very private. The landlady's daughter is engaged to a policeman that is on the case to catch the killer. The strange lodger is also attracted to the daughter, who happens to be the type the serial killer targets, and the landlady gets suspicious as more things add up between the lodger and the infamous The Avenger. The Lodger is a visual treat like all good silent films need to be. It just looks right in its use of light and shadow. Not as striking and in your face about it as German films from this era, but it had its moments, like the use of animated text in the opening of the film. The Lodger is very much a classic that had its impact on thrillers and horror films that makes it worth watching today. Someone might remember last year's marathon and what I watched then. That some of these plot beats sounds a bit familiar. Last year I picked the 1953 thriller Man in the Attic out of that b-movie DVD boxset I have, and that movie was an inferior ripoff of The Lodger. It changed the plot to be about Jack the Ripper and the Whitechapel murders, but it was the same story down to just about every beat, only poo poo. It was boring and lacked any of the visual beauty of The Lodger. And while I'm spoiling The Lodger by saying this, but Man in the Attic just had the guy be the killer. At least The Lodger gave me a plot twist at the end with that the lodger wasn't the killer after all.
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Oct 9, 2023 03:08
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 The Company of Wolves, 1984 When I get movies to watch for these marathons, I just go random lists I find by googling the word horror and some decade or whatever. Or just go by half memories of stuff I heard mentioned or saw somewhere. I never look up info on any of the films beyond maybe imdb.com scores, so I legit don't know what I'm getting into most of the time. So to my surprise, The Company of Wolves was not the werewolf horror I thought it would be based on the name and poster. It is horror and it has werewolves, but it is a retelling of Little Red Riding Hood through some girl's dream. Like as in the whole movie is a dream from start to finish, and you know it from the very start. And because it is a dream, it got this sort of otherworldly feel and look. It is very much a movie more about fairytales, folklore and fantasy before it is a horror film, and if it wasn't for all these in your face, barely metaphors for things like puberty and sex, it could almost be a children's movie. The actual horror stuff is really cool with some of the special effects and that scene 20 minutes in with a man ripping the flesh of his own face as part of his werewolf transformation was really awesome. It is a very different movie from what most people think about as a horror film and I'd put it in the same camp as other 80s fantasy films like Labyrinth and The Dark Crystal before werewolf horror like The Howling and An American Werewolf in London. Very different, but glad I made it a part of my October marathon.
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Oct 10, 2023 02:54
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 Tigers Are Not Afraid/Vuelven, 2017 The situation with the cartels in Mexico is one of the most hosed things going on in the world in the last few decades, which says a lot considering lot of hosed up things going on right now. Thousands upon thousands people not just murdered, but many also tortured, including women and children, because the cartels rule through fear. It has created a culture of pure terror and sadism in the ranks of cartels, and some truly awful people get to do what horrible poo poo they want unpunished. 10 year old Estrella gets three wishes and wish for her dead mother to come back. She does return as a ghost and it is anything but pleasant as she was tortured and brutally murdered. Estrella tries to get away from it all and join a gang of orphaned boys, and things get messy as she is both haunted by the visions of the dead and supernatural, as well as the real horrors of gang violence and being hunted by gangsters that work for the man that killed her mother. At first I thought the visions and events were maybe delusions or just her using her imagination to make sense of the very real horrors she is dealing with, but as the movie goes on, it becomes clear that it is not just something that goes on in her head. Stuff gets darker and darker, and her mother is leading her closer and closer to where she was killed and her body dumped. I thought this was a pretty interesting film. Sort of cutesy with graffiti moving and stuff a young girl might imagine, then have it contrast with very much real life horror and children living on the streets dealing with cartel people that have no issue just straight up murdering them. In a lot of ways, this is one of the darkest films I've seen in this marathon so far.
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Oct 11, 2023 03:21
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 When a Stranger Calls, 1979 This is where that "the call is coming from inside the house" thing is from. It is not the only movie from that time to use that idea, but I won't say the title of the other because it would spoil a big reveal in that one. This on the other hand has it happen at the start of the film. A babysitter gets harassed by a strange caller who gets more and more creepy and keeps asking her to check on the kids. It got a great buildup and payoff. It is one of the most iconic scenes in late 70s horror, so much so that there are two songs by Mortician that samples from it. Then the police arrive and arrest the guy and he escapes seven years later. On imdb.com, it simply says "A psychopathic killer terrorizes a babysitter, then returns seven years later to menace her again.", and while technically true, he doesn't menace her again until maybe the last ten minutes of the film. Most of the film is him moping around as a homeless man after escaping while a private detective tries to track him down. It is a bit of a downer compared to the rest of the movie. While this is by no means a bad movie, it is the weakest for me so far in this year's marathon. It is so worth watching for that opening, just not gonna be in a hurry to watch it again compared to so many other movies.
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Oct 12, 2023 03:25
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 Threads, 1984 The one thing I love about this marathon and horror in general is just the variety of types of movies I watch. This infinite tapestry of all kinds movies in every possible style and tone, all labeled horror in one way or another. I'm not the type of guy that's scared of anything really and desensitized to everything, so I mostly watch these movies because I'm a morbid gently caress that likes seeing people murdered and think that monsters are cool. There is far between each film that I find disturbing. Threads is one of those few movies. It isn't even trying to be a horror film at all, it just shows what a global nuclear holocaust will look like. The first 48 minutes or so just focuses on regular people in Sheffield in England with the news in the background. U.S.S.R. claiming America is behind a revolution in Iran and tensions escalating with a U.S. submarine getting destroyed. The first nukes were dropped in Iran. In between these people just trying to get through their lives and the increasingly disturbing news, we have this narrator that explains stuff like what kind of cities are targets for nuclear attacks and such, while showing the local authorities preparing for imminent attack. At around 48 minutes, the first bomb goes off in the atmosphere, knocking out the electric grid all over the U.K., then minutes later, the rest of the bombs hit. At this point, the real horror is only beginning. I'm not going into detail about the total annihilation of where the bombs hit, the burning bodies near the blast or anything like that. I'm just going to say it is very well done and truly feels both real and disturbing. And truly anyone that died during the blast are the lucky ones. Because the true horror of nuclear war is not the explosion. It isn't even the people puking their guts out as they die of radiation sickness. The true horror is all the years after. Total destruction of all infrastructure, of crops, of everything. Tens of millions of corpses that can't be cremated as every bit of fuel can't be wasted, won't get buried as there is no manpower. Military and the local courts gather up people accused of looting and executing them en masse in an authoritarian grab for power. People starving and freezing to death as the first nuclear winter sets in. We only see England in the Sheffield era, but we know the rest of the world is just as hosed. Truly the darkest film I've seen in some time.
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Oct 13, 2023 04:03
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 The Craft, 1996 The first rewatch of the marathon. Rewatch as in I saw it on TV many, many years ago. A lot of movies are shaped by the decade they came out and The Craft is very much a 90s movie. Everything from the music to how everything looks. This is peak 90s all the way. A newcomer to a private Catholic school joins with the outcast girls in a witches coven and she gets real deep in magic and spell casting. Things go too far and people die, she wants out, but the other witches won't allow it. That's as much plot synopsis you really need. This is just a fun movie and really cool with its pure 90s energy. The plot almost doesn't matter as it is just about these girls hanging out and discovering real magic. A lot of the horror comes from one getting more power hungry and nasty as the movie goes on, but I was sort of rooting for her all the way. I didn't have enough memories of this film to be truly nostalgic for it, but it did trigger some 90s nostalgia and I had a lot of fun watching this.
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Oct 14, 2023 03:10
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 The Funhouse, 1981 The Funhouse, 1981 I lost the internet for over 24 hours, so I ended up watching three movies in a row as I had nothing better to do. The first film was The Funhouse by Tobe Hooper of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre fame. Bunch of teens sneak off a ride at a carnival to spend the night there after the place gets shut down for the night. They witness a murder and are chased by a deformed freak. The setting is cool and the monster makeup is nice, but it takes 40 minutes to get to the horror and it isn't that great. There's a reason this isn't Tobe Hooper's most famous movie.  Evil Dead Rise, 2023 I liked this one a lot more than The Funhouse. It is pretty much just Evil Dead, only in an old apartment complex and with a way more serious tone than the comedic sequels. Not much that needs to be said other than it was fun and cool Evil Dead action with possessions and bodies twisting and twitching around.  Terrifier 2, 2022 I really liked this one. Art the Clown is one of the most evil bastards out there. Just taking pure joy in death and suffering, and he really goes out of his way to make sure the people he kills suffer. And with this new supernatural aspect of his character, he has just become this nearly unstoppable embodiment of evil. Terrifier 2 was a lot of fun.
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Oct 16, 2023 00:05
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 The Haunted Castle/Schloß Vogelöd, 1921 One issue in this marathon is that as I try to know as little about the movies before I watch them, I end up seeing some stuff that's only sort of horror related than straight up horror. With a title like The Haunted Castle, I was stoked for some ghost action. Turns out there are no ghosts and the hauntings are more about guilt and intrigue around a murder. I love anything with old mansions and stuff like that, so it was kind of disappointing there was hardly any horror at all. Bunch of rich people hang out in an old chateau to hunt, a count that is rumored to have murdered his own brother invites himself to the hunting party. Also the widow of the dead brother is there, as well as a priest that disappears one night. Everyone thinks it is the count that's behind the mysterious disappearance. There is one legit great horror scene when one of the guests has a nightmare about a big monstrous hand grabbing him from a window, but it is just a dream, so it doesn't really count. It is not a bad movie, I just expected more from the man that made such horror classics like Faust and Nosferatu.
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Oct 16, 2023 01:58
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 The Fury, 1978 The Fury is one of those rare horror movies that also counts as spy thriller. It got shootouts, a car chase and secret agents. A CIA agent nearly gets killed while a shadowy branch of the government kidnaps his psychic son to try to groom him into a living weapon. He has to go underground in order to not get assassinated by these people and is trying to find out where his son is held. There is also this girl with a lot of potential joining a school for people with special powers and she has a psychic link to the son. While psychics and the supernatural are a load of bullshit, the CIA and the military did waste millions of dollars back in the 70s trying to use people who claimed to have powers as spies and such. There was also this failed attempt at making parapsychology a real science that led to a lot of embarrassment and a lot of wasted resources. But this being a movie, telepathy, telekinesis and so on is real for these characters and there are so many cool scenes as a result. Both the action and the horror scenes are pretty great. They don't hold back on the blood and this film got so much going for it. Despite that, I kind of felt bored through most of the runtime. It is hard to point out why, but every scene after the first 20 minutes or so that wasn't some supernatural action just failed to hold my attention. Like I couldn't give a poo poo about most of the characters. The father looking for his son was the only one I sort of cared about because he was a badass CIA agent. The Fury is very much worth watching for all the cool stuff in it, but there is a reason this one isn't a beloved classic. Scanners from 1981 is just way superior when it comes to horror about people with mental powers.
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Oct 17, 2023 02:35
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 Coming Home in the Dark, 2021 This movie don't gently caress around and goes absolute pitch black right away mere minutes after being introduced to the family that's about to get tormentede by two serial killers. It is legit hard to talk about what happens in Coming Home in the Dark without spoiling stuff. But I will say this is not a movie about the kill count despite a lot of people dying. It is not about showing of torture or gore. This is more an extremely violent and absolute bleak psychological drama taking place during one long bloody night. These two people are irredeemably evil in their actions, yet there is the extremely tiny possibility of sympathy to be shown for them that were very much shaped into the horrible people they've become. Not that anything can ever excuse what they do, but it makes this a more grounded story with actual themes rather than some horror movie you watch for your morbid pleasures. It is a movie that's made to be uncomfortable and to be anything but pleasant over trying to be scary. One of my top picks in this marathon so far.
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Oct 18, 2023 03:16
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 Kwaidan, 1964 Ghost stories exist in all cultures and the Japanese are no exception. Kwaidan tells four such stories set in feudal Japan. Four incredible beautifully filmed stories. With amazing set design and costumes. And just really stylized matte paintings that give the movie a mythical or dream-like feel at times. The matte paintings are at their most stylized in the second story where the sky is full of eyes looking down at the characters. Is this movie really scary? No, but is maybe the most gorgeous movie I've seen in quite some time.
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Oct 19, 2023 04:39
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 Mad Love, 1935 I've gotten to the part of the marathon where I'll mostly rewatch stuff I haven't seen in ages. A brilliant, but mad surgeon puts the hands of an executed knife throwing murderer on a pianist who got his hands mangled in a train accident. The pianist stops being good at playing the piano and gets good at throwing knives instead. Also he feels his hands want to murder. The surgeon is madly in love with the pianist's wife and tries to use this hand situation to gaslight the pianist into thinking he commited a murder in order to get him out of the way. It is a silly plot of course, but that's to be expected from a 30s movie. The whole reason I wanted to watch this one again is for Peter Lorre's performance. There is a reason he is an old school horror icon. No one plays awkward creeps like he does. He is 100% of the reason to watch this film as it was way slower than I remembered it being. In fact I remembered loving it. I think it is because of the Peter Lorre scenes. It takes forever to get to the good stuff and most of the good stuff is right at the end. A tighter script with maybe having Peter Lorre's character's perspective as the main focus would have catapulted this into a classic. But because they went with this slog of a script that takes forever to get anywhere, it is just an ok movie. Still very much worth watching at least once if you are a classic horror fan and love seeing Peter Lorre being creepy.
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Oct 20, 2023 03:14
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 The Devil-Doll, 1936 Here is a 30s horror movie I legit don't know why isn't more famous. A man escapes prison with an old mad scientist and the scientist has figured out a way to shrink people and animals. The problem is with shrunken brains, they are mindless, but can be controlled telepathically by focusing on them. The man uses this tech to get revenge on the three men that wrongfully got him in prison. And he does this disguised as an old lady. We are talking full on Robin Williams playing Mrs. Doubtfire routine here. We got mad science. We got cross dressing. And on top of that, this is a legit good movie. I'd even go as far as to say this belongs among the other classics of the 30s. Why isn't this movie more well known? Very much worth watching if you are a 30s horror fan.
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Oct 21, 2023 10:00
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 Gothic, 1986 This movie is about that fateful night Mary Shelley came up with the idea for Frankenstein while visiting Lord Byron. It is mostly just a bunch of aristocrats messing around spooking each other and themselves. They have seance and the line between dream and reality gets blurred as the night goes on. I wasn't sure what to make of this movie at first, but it got better as I watched it. Not the best film of the marathon so far, but I think I'd like to revisit this one.
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Oct 22, 2023 10:04
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 The Wolf Man, 1941 Of all big classic Universal Pictures horror movies, The Wolf Man is my least favorite of the bunch. It is hard to point out why, but it just feels way more slow and boring compared to the other big names from the studio. And I felt that when rewatching The Wolf Man. But it is still a good movie once it gets going. Lon Chaney Jr. became a horror icon thanks to this movie and there's all sorts of trivia I could talk about, but there isn't much I can't say about this movie that hasn't been said a million times before. It is a classic for a reason. A kind of boring one in my eyes, but I'm still glad I gave it a rewatch. It is always good to refresh these in my mind.
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Oct 23, 2023 02:33
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 X: The Man with the X-ray Eyes, 1963 I got to have my dose of Roger Corman movies every year in these marathons. A doctor wants to expand the light spectrum the human eye can see and make it possible for doctors to see inside the human body with the naked eye. The grant board wants results if they are going to keep giving him funds, so he does the experiment on himself and it works, but passes out from the pain. The grant board decide to cut funding as a result. Since it worked, he insist on keep administering the eye drops. He accidentally kills a coworker by pushing him out the window and runs from the police since no one will think it was an accident because his sanity is being questioned due to resent events. His life on the run turns out be quit nightmarish as he no longer sees the world in normal light, always seeing through things and people, even his own eyelids. This is an very underrated sci-fi horror in my opinion. It don't have much in horror in terms of people getting killed and our main character is not some cackling mad scientist. He is just a doctor trying to do what is right. It don't need over the top horror stuff to be a compelling story and it is told with the right phase within the right running time. I strongly recommend this for anyone that likes older sci-fi horror.
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Oct 24, 2023 03:07
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 Fiend Without a Face, 1958 Of all the 1950s sci-fi horror films out there, Fiend Without a Face is one of the coolest. Some sort of invisible vampire that sucks brain fluids is terrorizing people around an military base. The poster spoils that this invisible horror is brains crawling around on their spinal cords and tentacles. I just love the design of these monsters. It is a real pity they only turn visible so late in the movie. But what makes this such a cool movie is not just the monster design. It is because this is one of the earliest examples of gore and splatter effects in American movies. These brains are gooey and full of blood. Leaking out their content as they get shot and bashed with an ax. And the way the characters board up the windows and barricade the room they are in to protect themselves from the onslaught of brains really reminded me of Night of the Living Dead. There's even a scene with a creepy graveyard with a crypt to ramp up all the cool horror stuff. Very much a minor classic.
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Oct 25, 2023 03:21
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 Shock, 1946 I was digging deep in that b-movie DVD boxset I got at a thrift store well over ten years ago and was drawn to this one because it had the horror icon Vincent Price in it. A woman witnesses a murder and goes into shock. Turns out the murderer is the head of a psychiatric clinic and has the woman transferred there so he can manipulate and gaslight her into thinking she is crazy and didn't see any murder. And if that fails, kill her. It is a fairly good idea for a psychological thriller, but this one just didn't have that much actual horror stuff. They could have done so much more. So it was just a very ok movie leaning towards boring. And this made me realize there aren't many days left of October. I think it is time for me to stop trying random movies and spend the rest of the marathon watching stuff that I actually want to watch.
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Oct 26, 2023 02:32
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 The Thrill of a Kill, 2011 This is a movie I've been meaning to rewatch for so many years now. The DVD was sent by mistake among a bunch of other DVDs I ordered way back when this movie was new (unrelated, I got a copy of Road House on DVD the same way in a different order). All I remember about this movie was that it looked cheap and that it was bloody, and it turns out after this rewatch that cheap and bloody are the only things I remember because that's all the movie is. we are talking legit zero budget, obvious stock sound effects, intro credits probably made with Windows movie maker cheap. The plot is also super thin, but this is the kind of movie that don't need one. Some girl have a fight with her mom, goes for a walk in the forest, run into a serial killer that knocks her out and she wakes up in his cabin where he keeps all the women he rapes, tortures and mutilates. The mom and sister goes looking for her, runs into the killer, there are flashbacks to the killer childhood to show why he is this misogynistic sadist. You really don't need much more for this kind of movie. It is one that tries to recreate the look and feel of 70s grindhouse and exploitation films, and the cheapness and sort of low effort captures that. But this is more than a cheap movie. It is a cheap Norwegian movie, and as a Norwegian, it feels weird seeing such a movie from my country. Retro-grindhouse is not what I associate Norwegian film making with despite there being at least one more movie in that style that I know of. But I'm glad this film exist. It looks so bad and crap. Both the main girls got this tacky mall goth look to them, the killer's mom got modern shoes in the flashbacks that's suppose to be from the 60s and so on. There's so much little things to point at and make fun of. Yet the scenes with the killer got this legit serial killer fell. that despite the cheap effects and stock sound effects, you are looking at a real serial killer without any overacting or silliness (if you ignore the ending). This movie is garbage in just about every way possible, but I enjoyed every second of it. A must see for all fans of zero budget cinema. Hot Dog Day #89 fucked around with this message at 03:04 on Oct 27, 2023 |
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Oct 27, 2023 02:56
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 The Evil Dead, 1981 In so many of these marathons I'd often watch Evil Dead 2 or Army of Darkness towards the end because they are such perfect horror comedies. The action and slapstick comedy beyond what anyone has done before or since. Bruce Campbell being the biggest badass ever. It is so easy to forget the more serious first movie that started it all. No real focus on comedy, actual focus on horror. And wow, I had forgotten how amazing this movie was. And such an important movie as it showed so many independent movie makers you don't need a huge budget to make good looking special effects. All these gore and monster effects are so simple, yet they look so cool. It is a serious movie, but so much fun to watch. And it being so many years since I watched this one, it almost felt like a fresh new movie I had never watched never seen before. That's not to say memories weren't triggered as I watched, but I really forgot how great this was. This is legit a close to perfect movie.
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Oct 28, 2023 02:52
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 The Invisible Man, 1933 Right after the three Frankenstein movies with Boris Karloff playing the monster, The Invisible Man is my favorite Universal Picture horror movie. It is just a movie that grabs you from start to finish without a single boring moment. The titular invisible man is driven mad by the chemicals that turned him invisible. He is such a condescending and mean spirited character, a true straight up evil megalomaniac that it becomes amazing to watch him in action. He is the perfect mad scientist, the peak of supervillainy. This is truly one of my all time favorite movies.
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Oct 29, 2023 04:52
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 The Haunting, 1963 The Haunting is without a doubt my favorite haunted house movie of all time. Just about everything about it is perfect. Hill House is this gigantic old mansion with a history of death that many believe is haunted. A scientist with an interest in the supernatural wants some people that he feels have a connection to paranormal events to stay at Hill house so he can observe what or if anything happens. Only three people show up, and one of them wasn't one of his picks, but a guy who stands to inherit the property. We follow the point of view of Eleanor, a guilt ridden young woman with mental health issues that start to feel she belongs to the house. While her sanity is questioned many times throughout the movie, there is no doubt the house is haunted and out to get Eleanor. There are no real jump scares, you never see any ghosts, and that's why this is such a great movie. It is all about the atmosphere, and the fact this is a black and white movie actually adds to the great feel of dread. This is an absolute classic.
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Oct 30, 2023 04:19
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 The Nightmare Before Christmas, 1993 Without doubt one of the most unique and interesting animated films to ever come out of Disney. Stop motion animation and with a look that would influence the entire goth subculture forever. This is the kind of stuff that could only have come out in the 90s. All the holidays exist as their own little dimensions or places, and Halloween exists in Halloween town, that spreads scares and fright onto earth every Halloween. Jack Skellington, the king of Halloween Town, is tired of the same year after year, and wanders off. He finds the gateway to Christmas town, and decides he wants to take over Christmas and become Santa Claus. It turns into a disaster as he doesn't really understand Christmas. This musical animated movie is iconic for a reason. The art and animation is fantastic, and just about every song is amazing. The worst I can say about it is that they slap Tim Burton's name on like it is his film. He only showed up two or three times in the studio during its production. It is a simple story with a focus on the songs. That's all it needs to be to have the classic status it has today. And it is the only movie I know of that counts both as an Halloween and Christmas movie.
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Oct 31, 2023 04:01
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 House on Haunted Hill, 1959 One of the most iconic dark house movies out there and with good reason. It is just fun. A dark house film is your typical haunted house movie with some murder mystery on top, but of with a some Scooby-Doo ending that shows the haunting are just some elaborate hoax (which makes zero sense in this movie as every ghostly event is set up in such a way that they have to be real in order to make sense). An old house with a history of murder and an acid pool in the cellar. What more do you need? Some rich guy played by the iconic Vincent Price hosts a haunted house party for a handful of people. They got to stay in the haunted old house for the night until the morning in order to get $10000 and the only door out will be bolted shut at midnight. They are also given loaded handguns as a party gift. Things get spooky right away as the house is very much haunted. House on Haunted Hill might be a tiny bit flat and slow for today's standard, but the overall feel is great and have that ghostly fun you want for a Halloween movie.
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Oct 31, 2023 12:51
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 The Frighteners, 1996 Such an underrated movie. The special effects in this one was an important step in Peter Jackson showing he had what it took to make The Lord of the Rings movies. The mix of digital with practical effects is great, and while some of the computer animations are dated by today's standards, they legit don't look all that bad still to this day. It is also one of the last things Michael J. Fox did before he retired due to Parkinson's disease. A survivor of a car crash can communicate and interact with ghosts that he puts to good use in scamming people. There are a lot of people dying of heart attacks in town and he sees a number on the forehead of the next person who dies. Turns out there is an evil spirit killing people. This is a legit fun and action packed film about ghosts that both deserved more attention when it came out and still today. It is a minor classic.
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Oct 31, 2023 16:17
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 The Rocky Horror Picture Show, 1975 It is not an October marathon leading up to Halloween without this. The perfect mix of 50s rock 'n' roll with 70s glam. The super queer mix of 30s and up to 50s sci-fi horror mixed with some Hammer studios: This is the ultimate horror comedy musical. There is no marathon without.
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Oct 31, 2023 19:00
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 Spider Baby or, the Maddest Story Ever Told, 1967 I said it many times before that I'm a sucker for any horror movie involving old mansions, and this got a great dilapidated big old house built in that Californian Gothic style. Some rich weirdos living in seclusion have a genetic disease that makes them mentally challenged and more child-like as they age, then eventually revert to a prehuman savage stage. The ones that reached that last stage get locked down in the basement. Horror icon Lon Chaney Jr. plays the chauffeur that has sworn to take care of remaining family members, including covering up the murders that might happen when outsiders walk in on their property. Some greedy distant relatives and their lawyer show up one day to get their hands on the estate and insist on staying the night. Spider Baby is as close to a perfect movie as you are within the world of low budget late 60s films. There is not a single boring moment, and for a deliberately schlocky, campy and cheap movie, there is one scene that is a legit emotional gut punch. I'm legit tearing up a bit just thinking back at it as I type. It is to me the best performance I've ever seen from Long Chaney Jr.. While it might be one of the last films for one horror icon, it is one of the first for another, Sid Haig. Spider Baby will always be a classic in my eyes.
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Nov 1, 2023 07:06
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 Re-Animator, 1985 One of those ultimate Halloween movies. Just the perfect ratio of comedy mixed with serious horror that only movies from the 80s had. The blood, the gore, the mad science, the everything. Do I even need to talk about this film? If you are a horror fan and haven't seen this film, then it is a bit like being a metalhead and never heard Judas Priest or Darkthrone, or being a punk rocker and never heard Sex Pistols or Dead Kennedys, or whatever fan and not seen/watched/played whatever big thing related to that. It is one of the ultimate classics.
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Nov 1, 2023 10:36
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 Pink Flamingos, 1972 I said in my review of Threads that horror was this vast tapestry of movies. For every movie about the spooks with either ghosts, ghouls or goblins, for every dark thriller about serial killers, there are just these weird nonsense movies that get lumped into horror because they are just too morbid or weird to fit in any other genre. Divine is this drag queen that prides themselves as being the most filthy person in the world. Some couple that runs a rape dungeon where the raped women are there to give babies to lesbian couples disagree and declare themselves as the most filthy people on earth. Divine don't take kindly to that and we got a movie with cannibalism, rape and murder. The characters are mean spirited. There is animal cruelty in of form of people loving while holding chicken between then, the chicken dies, and the whole movie is just a huge freak show of gross and weird stuff. As a queer person I should be offended by a movie where queer people only exist to be gross and weird, but I'm not. It is just a movie that just pulls off the whole gross and evil people right in a way in the sense you want to be one of the gross and evil people. I think this clip sums it up https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wTOWIMJkKpc Hot Dog Day #89 fucked around with this message at 13:39 on Nov 1, 2023 |
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Nov 1, 2023 13:33
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