Halloween Horror Marathon 2014

[AndyDursin]

Here's a pleasant surprise, a literate, handsomely-produced take on the old tale, starring...Robert Englund?!

It was actually pretty decent, and I'm looking forward to seeing Shout's Blu-Ray coming up in January. Plus one other nice element about it? Jill Schoelen!

[Monterey Jack]

Yep, she was lovely. The HD version of the movie on Netflix looks really nice, so I'm sure the Blu will as well.

Scream (1996): 9/10



That screencap might be the funniest thing in the movie. "Cellular phone"...

Scream 2 (1997): 7/10

[Monterey Jack]

Scream 3 (2000): 4/10



This gets worse every time I watch it. Aside from a solid opening sequence (bonus points for Kelly Rutherford in a black slip), it's nothing but recycled leftovers, with the comedy aspects dialed way up to the point of buffoonery (Parker Posey mugging up a storm! Cameos from Carrie Fisher and -- in a moment that isn't at all badly dated -- Jay & Silent Bob!). And for all of the lip service the screenplay gives to the "rules" of trilogies, the only one it sadly follows is that the third film most often sucks.

Scre4m (2011): 7/10



I find this one a big step up from the third...the kills are nastier and more inventive, the schticky comedy is dialed down, and it's more artfully crafted. Too bad for the hideously ugly cinematography, though, which makes the movie look like it's being projected through a fishtank filled with soapy dishwater. What a blight. This ranks with Michael Mann's Public Enemies as one of the most ineptly-photographed big studio films I've seen in the last five years.

[Monterey Jack]

New Year's Evil (1980): 2/10



Another cheapjack slasher, and one that doesn't even bother to conceal the killer's identity with some sort of disguise...we clearly see his face from frame one! Poorly-acted, badly-photographed, no suspense.

[AndyDursin]

THE VANISHING
6.5/10



George Sluizer’s critically-lambasted remake of his own THE VANISHING is a watchable variation on Sluizer’s 1988 Dutch film of the same name. Writer Todd Graff’s American redo has aged a bit better than I anticipated and is mostly faithful to its source – with a psycho (Jeff Bridges) abducting the girlfriend of Kiefer Sutherland, who obsessively spends years looking for her – until its altered, and decidedly more “upbeat,” finale. Though well-made and shot by Peter Suschitzky, the film is dragged down by a particularly poor performance from the usually reliable Bridges as the marble-mouthed killer – so self-consciously mannered that it’s initially hard to tell if he’s playing for comedic or dramatic effect.

As Sutherland’s unfortunate lost love, Sandra Bullock, at least, used the film as a springboard for her subsequent stardom, and Nancy Travis lends solid support as Sutherland’s later love interest. The latter, along with Kiefer’s haunted performance, make this “Vanishing” more compelling than I recall it being upon my initial viewing two decades ago, in spite of a dragged-out climax and Bridges’ ineffective performance.

[Monterey Jack]

The Town That Dreaded Sundown (1976): 4/10



Noteworthy as a masked slasher movie that pre-dates Halloween by two years (and being probably the only movie I can think of to feature death by trombone[!]), this is still not very good, with narcolepsy-inducing narration and "comedic" interludes with bumbling lawmen that wouldn't seem out of place in an episode of The Dukes Of Hazzard diluting whatever anemic tension the movie manages to generate. Not every slasher movie can boast a cast member from Gilligan's Island as a near-victim, however (Dawn "Mary Ann" Wells).

[AndyDursin]

Yeah I was pretty bored by that one also. Nicely shot for what it was....but that's about it.

[Monterey Jack]

I couldn't resist this double-feature this year...

Evil Dead (2013): 9/10



The Cabin In The Woods (2012): 8/10



"How hard is it to kill nine-year-olds?!"

[Monterey Jack]

Oculus (2014): 8/10



VERY pleasant surprise with this one...extremely eerie and with a blessed lack of cheap jump scares.

[Monterey Jack]

Stir Of Echoes (1999): 5/10



I didn't think much of this fifteen years ago, and sadly the passage of time hasn't improved it in any noticeable way. Adapting a novel by Richard Matheson (a tattered paperback copy of Matheson's The Shrinking Man can be seen at one point), screenwriter and director David Koepp's film isn't terrible -- it's reasonably well-crafted -- but nevertheless traffics in all of the usual been-there, done-that goosebump clichés. The acting certainly doesn't help...Kevin Bacon's descent into obsessive madness is too unmodulated and abrupt, and a key flashback loses its intended tragic/horrific punch with some truly awful performances by the two young actors that feature heavily in the underlying mystery. A nice try but...it just doesn't work.

[AndyDursin]

The rape element didn't help either. I remember being on a first-and-last-date, knowing it had some of that in it, but it left a really sour taste in the film (to say nothing of the date lol).

I can only imagine it hasn't aged well. A lot of horror movies from that era are dated. HALLOWEEN H20, which I never really liked to begin with, is so "90s" and SCREAM-like it's even more transparent now than it was back then.

[Monterey Jack]

Plus, it opened barely a month after The Sixth Sense, so it just came across like sloppy seconds at the time (not that I like The Sixth Sense all that much, but that's a whole different thread ).

[Monterey Jack]

Coraline (2009): 10/10



"I'm not the 'Other' anything...I'm me."

[Monterey Jack]

ParaNorman (2012): 9/10

[Monterey Jack]

The Rage: Carrie 2 (1999): 0.5/10



It's like someone took a big, smelly dump all over my face.