Halloween Horror Marathon 2016

[Monterey Jack]

Taking a hiatus??

Waiting for some new acquisitions to arrive in the mail...those damn WB Stephen King titles are backlogged and taking forever. I have one coming via Netflix tomorrow, so it's back on.

[AndyDursin]

King transfers are excellent

[Monterey Jack]

King transfers are excellent

That's the general consensus at Blu-Ray.com, from the lucky few who have managed to procure copies. As long as I get them at some point in October, I'll be happy.

[Monterey Jack]

Well, got shipment confirmation for It, but I'm still waiting on Cat's Eye and Salem's Lot.

Anyways, let the screaming re-commence!

-The Entity (1982): 8.5/10



Unnerving, fact-based story of a young woman, Carla Moran (an excellent Barbara Hershey), who finds herself violently assaulted in her bedroom...by an unseen assailant that remains invisible even is it demonstrates great strength in hurling her around like a rag doll. Her attempts to get psychological help from an understanding doctor (Ron Silver) don't do anything to quell the increasingly violent acts, so she eventually turns to a team of parapsychologists who seem more interested in obtaining irrefutable scientific evidence of the unidentified "Entity" than in helping the distraught Carla fight off the demon tormenting her. An unusually classy and stylish effort from noted C-movie hack Sydney J. Furie (Iron Eagle, Superman IV: The Quest For Peace), it boasts superb cinematography by Stephen H. Burum (who would later lens a string of films for Brian De Palma) and a throbbing, battering electronic score by Charles Bernstein that was sampled decades later by Quentin Tarantino in Inglourious Basterds. Were these events all inside Carla's head, or was there an exterior force working against her? The movie wisely leaves the answers ambiguous, and the resulting film is tense, scary and beautifully acted by Hershey.

[Monterey Jack]

-The Final Terror (1983): 4/10



Typically cheap, slapped-together early-80's slasher, noteworthy only for the future pedigrees of the cast (including Daryl Hannah, Joe Pantoliano and Rachel Ward) and of debuting director Andrew Davis (who would make a string of above-average Chuck Norris and Steven Seagal beat-'em-ups in the 80's and early 90's before hitting gold with his Best Picture nominee The Fugitive). This is your usual, generic programmer about a bunch of campers terrorized in the woods by an unseen assailant, with lackluster gore effects and little suspense. Plus, did EVERY 80's slasher movie have to feature a scene with a victim's body hanging upside-down with their throat slit? Not the worst of this type (there's at least some nice location footage), but wholly unmemorable.

[Monterey Jack]

-Miss Peregrine's Home For Peculiar Children (2016): 8.5/10



Tim Burton's latest is probably the closest we're gonna get to a good semi-horror movie in theaters for the next month (what else is there to see...Ouija 2? A Madea Halloween?) is a spirited, charmingly wicked piece of YA franchise-building that's brimming with the kind of surreal, lightly gruesome imagery (a cute little girl with a nasty, gaping maw hidden behind her hair on the back of her neck, the villains of the piece noshing on a plateful of freshly-plucked eyeballs, sucking the optics nerves down like strands of spaghetti) that older kids with a taste for the macabre will be delighted by. Eva Green, with her flash-eyed, eccentric beauty, is ideally cast as the headmistress of a group of "Peculiars"...children with exceptional (and downright weird) powers, who have been encased in a "bubble" of time -- circa 1943 -- that has kept them forever ageless so long as they never venture out of it. A teenage boy (Asa Butterfield) learns of their existence through the stories of his late grandfather (Terrence Stamp), and must defend the group against the "Hollowghast", hideous monsters created in a scientific experiment gone awry by a madman (Samuel L. Jackson, sporting a shock of white hair, piercing eyes to match, and mouthful of gnashing shark's teeth, delivering one of his most droll, relaxed performances in a while) who needs to consume the eyes of the Peculiar children in order to become immortal. Younger kids might quiver at some of the more grotesque imagery, but older kids and Burton fans will find much to savor here, including some old-school stop-motion animation effects and a climax with a gaggle of amusement-park skeletons coming to rickety life that's a great homage to classic Ray Harryhausen films. The second half of the diverges wildly from the Ransom Riggs book, but in this case, it helps to make this more of a stand-alone piece, instead of a feature-length advertisement for the next installment, and I have no problems with that. Even the absence of Danny Elfman isn't that much of a disappointment, as the score by Mike Highham and Matthew Margeson is rich, lush and the kind of music you rarely hear in fantasy movies these days. Lots of fun.

[Monterey Jack]

Finally, the official kick-off for October's horror marathon! Here, have a balloon to celebrate. They floooooooooooooooat...they ALL float down here!

-It (1990): 7.5/10



A ratings smash for ABC when it was originally broadcast (in two parts) in the fall of 1990, It (adapted from the sprawling Stephen King doorstop of a horror novel by Carrie screenwriter Lawrence D. Cohen) is about a ravenous, evil force in the small town of Derry, Maine that awakens once every thirty years to feed upon the fears and bodies of young children, and the "Loser's Club" of seven kids who gradually come together to face the nebulous, shape-shifting "It" (most often portrayed as a deceivingly jovial clown called Pennywise, played with sneering, theatrical relish by an excellent Tim Curry) in the year of 1960. Decades later, all of them are called back to their hometown when a new rash of child deaths indicates at Pennywise is up to his old tricks. Directed by John Carpenter alumnus Tommy Lee Wallace (who previously made the bizarre Halloween III: Season Of The Witch), It suffers in comparison to King's novel, which was dense in subtext and rich with subplots that are mostly pruned away in this Cliff's Notes adaptation (not to mention the standards & practices of early-90's network television, which literally defangs the nastiest of King's brand of EC comics grue), but it's certainly a well-made, expertly-cast film, with a nice interweaving of the narratives of the kids (including the late Jonathan Brandis as "Stuttering" Bill Denborough, a young Seth Green as Ritchie Tozier, and a pre-Ginger Snaps Emily Perkins as Beverly Marsh) and adults (including the late John Ritter, Night Court's Harry Anderson and Annette O'Toole) and adequate production values for the period. It's really Curry's show, though...his Pennywise is creepy, darkly funny and overall one of the most memorable villains in the Stephen King cinematic library. The second half suffers from a weak climax (with weak F/X), but overall this holds up better than you'd think.

[mkaroly]

I loved the book - it was one of my all-time favorite King novels. And I liked the TV show for what it was up to the final confrontation...which as you and Andy mentioned in the reviews was very weak with bad special effects. I read through the last 200 or so pages of the book in one sitting one night because I could not put the book down. I remember being so disappointed with the TV show ending. Granted that it's very hard to truly adapt many (but not all) of King's novels to the screen, IT almost was great. Instead it ended up being good with a disappointing ending.

[Monterey Jack]

IT almost was great. Instead it ended up being good with a disappointing ending.

This is why I'm keenly anticipating the forthcoming big-screen remake (from Mama director Andy Muschietti)...with two movies to play with, and an R rating, we should be able to get more of King's text up there. Granted, that version will update the timeline (the "kids" section will take place in 1989, and the "adults" in 2017), but since "It" woke up every thirty years, I actually don't mind that much. It is kind of scary that, when I saw the miniseries, I was sixteen, but now I'm basically the same age as the "Too old!" adults in the second half.

[Monterey Jack]

-Tourist Trap (1979): 6.5/10



Odd crossbreeding of House Of Wax and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre is about your usual photogenic band of Dumb Kids (Tanya Roberts from Charlie's Angels and That 70's Show the most noteworthy member of the cast) who experience car trouble during a trip and run across a weird museum filled with elaborate animatronic mannequins, overseen by an eccentric keeper (Chuck Connors) who is hiding a strange secret in the secluded house behind his museum. Set to a fruity Pino Donaggio score and with several aspects that are not explained in the slightest (like some inexplicable telekinesis), Tourist Trap is one strange little movie, although not without its low-budget charms and fleeting moments of eeriness.

[AndyDursin]

TOURIST TRAP is a pretty lame movie. I never really cared for it.

Best Buy alert -- GHOST AND MR CHICKEN (and IT CAME FROM OUTER SPACE) are in-store exclusives this week!

[Monterey Jack]

AHHHWHHHHOOOOOO! AHHHHWHHHHHHHOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!! (Werewolves of London...)

-An American Werewolf In London (1981): 8/10



-The Wolfman (2010): 8/10



What better way to spend my day off with the two Lycanthropic horror films that netted Rick Baker his first -- and likely last, given his recent retirement -- Best Makeup Oscars? An American Werewolf In London remains a great mixture of frights and laughs ("A naked American man stole my balloons!"), with Baker's key transformation setpiece remaining the high-water mark for this kind of thing even thirty-five years later. That said, I'm not quite as high on the film as most...I think it's highly entertaining, but doesn't hit the heights of the best of the genre, with a wildly abrupt ending that I've never cared for. Even for a horror/comedy, the way the film concludes would be akin to Shaun Of The Dead ending with Simon Pegg shooting his Mum in the head, freeze-framing on his tear-streaked face...and then smash-cutting to the end credits with a jaunty performance of "The Monster Mash" on the soundtrack. It's a tonal mistake that brings the movie down a peg for me, and it's a shame. As for The Wolfman, I think it's more than a little underrated by most...it's a beautifully gloomy period piece, a straight remake of the classic 1941 Universal film with Lon Chaney, Jr., and it brims with excellent production values, adroit performances by a terrific cast (Benicio Del Toro, Anthony Hopkins, Emily Blunt, Hugo Weaving), enthusiastic bouts of gore and boating some superb sequences (primarily the Wolfman's extended rampage through the London streets and a rousing final showdown in a burning manor house). Fanboys groused about the "crap" CGI touch-ups to Baker's efforts, and while there are a few mediocre shots, it's like missing the forest for the trees in a film that is otherwise classy, involving and crisply scary.

[Monterey Jack]

-Housebound (2014): 8.5/10



Highly entertaining horror/comedy from New Zealand about a sullen young woman (Morgana O'Reilly) sentenced to house arrest in the abode of her mother (Rima Te Wiata) following a string of criminal activities. Forced to weak an ankle bracelet alarm set to go off if she ventures too far from the premises, she steadfastly refuses to interact with her estranged Mum or her live-in stepfather. But when she starts hearing strange skitterings and thumps in the walls, and little things start to go missing (or appear as if out of then air), she starts to research the history of the previous owners of the house, and begins to suspect that all is not right. A Film Fest favorite from a few years back, Housebound is even better the second time around (now that I'm fully awake to appreciate it), with an efficient mix of laughs, frights and splashes of Raimi-esque gore (the cheese grater to the face is a particular high point).

[Monterey Jack]

Also working my way through the first season of Ash vs. Evil Dead on Blu-Ray (missed out last year because I'm not subscribed to Starz), rationing out one episode per day. Loads of fun, and the Chin still has it.

[AndyDursin]

I enjoyed what I saw, though truthfully, I did find it repetitious. Could have been half as long and just as effective.