Halloween Horror Marathon 2019

[AndyDursin]

Every once in a while you come across some strange creature who thinks POLTERGEIST III is better than II. Same sort that believe SUPERMAN IV is superior to III. Bone chilling how anyone could possibly feel that way!

[Monterey Jack]

Every once in a while you come across some strange creature who thinks POLTERGEIST III is better than II. Same sort that believe SUPERMAN IV is superior to III. Bone chilling how anyone could possibly feel that way!

I've never been a fan of Poltergeist II, but it's a MASTERPIECE compared to the third one. At least that film got most of the original cast back, as well as ILM and Jerry (not to mention Julian Beck's creepy performance).

[Monterey Jack]

Better the second time? Sometimes…

-Blair Witch (2016): 5/10

-The Conjuring 2 (2016): 9/10





Sequels are always a dodgy proposition, and in no genre is there a higher ratio of crap-to-quality when it comes to second installments than horror (most #2’s come across more like Number Two). A pair of 2016 follow-ups illustrate just how wide that range cam be. Blair Witch is the belated follow-up to the 1999 pop-culture phenomenon The Blair Witch Project, where co-directors and writers Eduardo Sanchez and Daniel Myrick presented the disappearance of a trio of grunge-era college filmmakers making a documentary about the legendary “Blair Witch” in the woods outside of Burkittsville, Maryland as a series of video tapes discovered by search parties that purported to document their increasingly-desperate final days. It was a film that essentially invented the “found footage” subgenre of horror films that continue to this day, as well as being one of the earliest movies to cannily utilize that then-novelty of The Internet!!! As a marketing tool, passing the film off as authentic footage in a gimmick that paid off handsomely, giving a zero-budget cheapie a pall of eerie, snuff-film queasiness.

That said, making a sequel to it seventeen years later (a quickie cash-in, the bizarre Book Of Shadows: Blair Witch 2, is best left a forgotten curio) is akin to trying to put the toothpaste back in the tube. There have been SO MANY of these faux-documentary FF movies over the last two decades that the novelty of the original’s presentation is no longer valid. It’s like getting excited about watching a movie presented in stereo sound around 1973. So what we’re left with here is nothing more than a blow-for-blow retread of the first film, only with a handful of token updates (they use drones! They have walkie-talkies and GPS!) as the brother of one of the original lost filmmakers from the original ventures into the woods looking for his lost sister along with a gaggle of generically-attractive twentysomethings. There are a handful of disturbing images along the way, a few jolts, but it’s all sound & fury, signifying nothing more than an artifact from a previous generation’s pop culture zeitgeist getting dusted off and repackaged to diminishing returns. Stick with the 1999 film.

On the other side of the coin there’s The Conjuring 2, with director James Wan returning to his chronicles of paranormal investigators Ed & Lorraine Warren (Patrick Wilson and Vera Farmiga, endearingly affectionate as always) as they look into the haunting of a run-down flat in Enfield, England, where the youngest daughter (a terrific Madison Wolfe) of a family of five (Frances O’Connor plays their divorced, frazzled mother) finds herself possessed by the spirit of a bitter old man who died in the same flat years earlier and yet refuses to leave. This is the rare horror sequel that manages to build upon what came before instead of merely rehashing it to shrug-inducing effect, and Wan’s skill behind the camera remains at a fever pitch, knowing just how long to hold a pause, when to cue the film’s sound design and music to strike, and how to make it all matter with the emphatic performances of the cast. Wilson and Farmiga remain a compellingly devoted couple, and the film generates a palpable sense of unease throughout, which manages to make its plus-sized 132-minute spread go past in a flash. I can only hope the series’ forthcoming third installment will maintain a similar pitch in quality without Wan’s presence in the director’s seat.

[Monterey Jack]

-The Nun (2018): 7/10



Prequel to the Conjuring movies brings us back to 1952, where the gruesome, hanged corpse of a nun has been discovered at a remote monastery in Romania. A priest named Father Burke (Demian Bichir) is dispatched by the Vatican to investigate, bringing along Sister Irene (Taissa Farmiga, kid sister of Vera “Lorraine Warren” Farmiga), a young novitiate nun who has yet to take her Final Vows. Brought there by a local man (Jonas Bloquet) who kept the monastery supplied on a monthly basis, they find out that a powerful evil presence has suffused the walls and surrounding grounds of the monastery, and they must find a way to keep it contained before its influence can escape and spread. The Nun is a film with an eerie, atmospheric setting ripe for old-school Hammer-style chills, and it is well-acted by Bichir and Farmiga, yet a faint sense of the routine hangs over the proceedings, as well-staged and solidly creepy as they often are. It’s a handsomely-crafted movie, and I enjoyed how it cleverly tied itself into the events of the first Conjuring by the end, and yet it’s only Good, not Great. For fans of the franchise, it’s recommended, but casual viewers might find it slick, but forgettable.

-The Prey (1984): 3.5/10



Typical 80’s slasher stuff (shot in 1980 and left on a shelf for four years) about a typical pack of victims hiking into the woods, scaring themselves silly with a typical campfire legend about how a group of Gypsies were burned alive a few decades ago, leaving one horrifically-burned survivor behind to haunt the woods looking for revenge, and the typical gory mayhem that ensues when the legend turns out to be all-too-true. As far as this kind of shoot-it-in-the-wood-to-save-money horror stuff goes, you could do far worse, as the film is reasonably well-shot and boasts some picturesque photography, yet it’s also padded out to a languid, 100+ minute running time with endless cutaways to random wildlife and bouts of gratuitous fornication that drag on endlessly. Where’s Bruce Campbell when you need him…?

-Transylvania 6-5000 (1985): 1/10



Atrocious “comedy” about a pair of reporters (Jeff Goldblum and Ed Begley, Jr.) for a cheesy, Weekly World News-style tabloid dispatched to scenic Transylvania to investigate a video purporting to chronicle a sighting of the actual Frankenstein Monster, and finding their hotel infested with eccentric oddball locals. How could a movie with such a distinguished, talented comic cast be so lifeless? Everyone from Jeffrey Jones to Michael Richards to Carol Kane to Norman Fell to Geena Davis (clad in skimpy Vampirella garb, making her by far the most enlivening, easy-on-the-eyes part of the film) show up, mugging and slapsticking their way through a desperately inert sub-Zucker Bros., sub-Mel Brooks farce that never generates a single honest laugh. You know a movie is in trouble when it trots out Richards literally slipping on banana peels(!) to generate chuckles. Heinous.

[AndyDursin]

6500 is horrible. Just atrociously bad!

[Monterey Jack]

6500 is horrible. Just atrociously bad!

So many funny people, and not even so much as a smirk or a chuckle. It's fascinatingly unfunny. Aside from Geena Davis looking very comely (and meeting future BF Goldblum) it's a total mess.

[AndyDursin]

They keep threatening to bring it to Blu-Ray...I just can't justify it occupying space on the shelf lol, but I might buy the streaming version if it's cheap!

[Monterey Jack]

They keep threatening to bring it to Blu-Ray...I just can't justify it occupying space on the shelf lol, but I might buy the streaming version if it's cheap!

It's free on Amazon Prime right now. I definitely wouldn't want to watch this again.

[AndyDursin]

It's one of many "New World" movies from the 80s that suck. Hard.

[Monterey Jack]

I’ll clean yer clock…

-The House With A Clock In Its Walls (2018): 7.5/10



Engaging Horror Lite for kids is a knowing throwback to “80’s PG” Amblin productions from – of all people – director Eli Roth (the auteur behind the reprehensible Hostel franchise and assorted other ugly, unappealing horror trash). Adapting a 1973 young adult novel by John Bellairs, House follows your typical Spielbergian orphan, Lewis Barnavelt (Owen Vaccaro), who, when his parents die in a car crash circa 1955, is sent off to live with his eccentric Uncle Jonathan (Jack Black) in his sprawling, medieval mansion crammed to rafters with old-timey junk. Oh, did I mention that Uncle Jonathan is a warlock (“…a boy witch!”), and along with his neighbor, Florence Zimmerman (Cate Blanchett) has to prevent a mysterious clock hidden somewhere in his home from winding down completely, or else a terrible plot set in motion by Uncle Jonathan’s deceased old magic partner, Isaac Izard (Kyle MacLachlan), will come to pass?

House… is a film brimming with fun visual frippery, and Black (all roly-poly exuberance) and Blanchett (all swanlike, patrician elegance) make for a winningly platonic pair, sniping at each other with wittily loving venom. It’s also engagingly dark at times, not backing away from some eerie visual imagery likely to give the very youngest kids pleasurable shivers. And yet the final product, as enjoyable for younger viewers as it is, kind of plays like one of those early-to-mid 2000’s Harry Potter knockoffs about a Chosen One learning bout love and loss and his totally awesome powers and stuff. It doesn’t help that Vaccaro is – to put as kindly as possible – not a very good young actor. Every time he’s tasked with depicting Lewis’ inner torment or sadness, he drops into the same wide-mouthed Ugly Cry face that’s more unintentionally comic that authentically moving. I always feel a little guilty picking on a child actor, and I’m sure the kid could have improved over time had this film spawned a franchise, and yet he’s not really up to the task of being a compelling lead character. Still, it’s a bright, fun, moderately spooky seasonal adventure for kids, and I’m sure they and their charmed parents should be able to overlook its flaws and enjoy it once the trick-or-treating has wound down.

Annabelle Comes Home (2019): 7/10



Third in the Annabelle franchise (spun off from the spooky doll featured in the original Conjuring) is somewhere in the middle, quality-wise, leagues better than the wan first film but not quite as eerie or atmospheric as that film’s pre-prequel, Annabelle: Creation. When Ed and Lorraine Warren (Patrick Wilson and Vera Farmiga as always) are away investigating their latest paranormal case, they leave young daughter Judy (McKenna Grace, replacing the now too-old Sterling Jerins in the role) in the care of babysitter Judy (Madison Iseman) and her friend Daniella (Katie Sarife). But when Daniella starts poking around the “artifact room” that contains all of the cursed and highly-dangerous items the Warrens have accrued over the years, the evil influence of Annabelle starts to bleed out, and allow the other objects in the room to spread and infect the three girls with horrible visions of murderous, blood-splattered brides, dead ferrymen with creepy, Coraline silver-dollar eyes and slavering werewolves prowling in the fog outside.

Annabelle Comes Home (the directing debut of series writer Gary Dauberman) offers a myriad of pleasurable shivers, with a surprisingly lack of gore considering the movie’s inexplicable R-rating (seriously, you could show this on network TV and not cut a frame from it) and fine performances from the trio of leading ladies. That said, there’s a modicum of wear & tear at this point in the “Conjuringverse”, a few too many spins through the same funhouse of hushed paused and subwoofer-rattling shocks, and one hopes that the upcoming third solo Conjuring movie would be a wise point to wrap it all up. This one is certainly fun and effective, but a little too-much, too-much.

Fun-sized All Hallows horror…

-Tales Of Halloween (2015): 3/10

-Trick ‘r Treat (2009): 8.5/10





Dug into the candy dish for a pair of bite-sized holiday anthologies. 2015’s Tales Of Halloween, sadly, is that pack of chalky Necco wafers that any self-respecting kid will try to trade away, only to find out no one else wants it, either. Offering a whopping ten stories spread across it’s 97-minute running time, it’s a thoroughly disappointing collection of routine ghoulish fare, with sub-Sam Raimi gore, a dearth of laughs or scares and “ironic” punchlines you can see coming a mile away. It’s nice to hear the sultry tones of Adrienne Barbeau as the narrator, and there are a couple of fun cameos for genre fans, but not one story stands out, and most are too short to make any sort of meaningful impact. It’s not quite the Movie 43 of horror anthologies (few skit movies can claim to be as wretched as Movie 43), but it's still awfully lame.

What’s the best way to rinse out the taste of a bad horror movie? Chase it with a similarly-themed one that does it far better, of course. Michael Dougherty’s Trick ‘r Treat (shot in 2007 and sadly kept on a shelf before being unceremoniously dumped direct-to-DVD in the fall of ’09) is pretty much as good as it gets when it comes to Halloween-themed anthologies, and horror anthologies in general, with all four tales contained within (sporting re-animated corpses, nasty l’ll bag-headed imps, a twisted take on Little Red Riding Hood and a particularly strict high school principal) overlapping each other in a cleverly-constructed manner that makes this the Pulp Fiction of horror anthologies. The mixture of scares and laughs is perfectly-pitched, the chronology of events helps each story to build upon the last one in a satisfying manner, and Douglas Pipes’ lush score (utilizing a fiendishly clever interpretation on that sing-songy childhood chant that ends, “…give me something good to eat…”) keeps the tone light and breezy. A new seasonal classic, and one that gets things done in under eighty fat-free minutes.

[Monterey Jack]

They’re looking to nosh on more than leftover Halloween candy…

-Critters (1986): 7/10

-Critters 2: The Main Course (1988): 8/10





Of the myriad of chintzy, low-budget Gremlins rip-offs that proliferated like…well, Gremlins during the mid-to-late 1980’s (Ghoulies, Munchies, Hobgoblins, what have you), the two Critters films stand out as the best of the imitators. The 1986 original has a pack of alien “Crites” (who are like mini-Tazmanian Devils with serrated jaws that shoot venomous porcupine quills at their chosen victims and who speak in sometimes-subtitled alien gibberish) hijacking the spacecraft that was transporting them to a prison asteroid in deep space and pilot it to the nearest inhabitable planet, Earth, where they land near the Brown Ranch in the small Kansas town of Grover’s Bend, and start munching their way through the local livestock and find far tastier prey in the local populace (80’s genre MILF Dee Wallace Stone plays the Brown family matriarch). Meanwhile, a pair of shape-shifting alien bounty hunters have been dispatched to Earth to eradicate the Crite threat, one taking on the visage of a popular rock star (Terrence Mann), the other cycling through a number of possible identities, including a half-chewed police deputy and the town drunk (Don Keith Opper)

Directed by Stephen Herek (Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure) and featuring creature design and puppetry by the Chiodo Bros. (Killer Klowns From Outer Space), Critters is a modest film with a cheeky sense of humor and lite, PG-13 bouts of violence. It never attains the anarchic glee or technical polish of Joe Dante’s two Gremlins features, but for a low-budget sci-fi/horror/comedy of the era, it delivers on the bottom line, and is enthusiastic genre fun.

That said, I actually prefer the follow-up, 1988’s Critters 2: The Main Course, with Scott Grimes reprising his role as Brad Brown, survivor of the original Critter outbreak coming back home to Grover’s Bend only to find that the titular beasties have left behind a cache of unhatched eggs…and it’s almost Easter time. Soon, they’ve begin hatching, replicating and turning the townsfolk into a rolling buffet line, while the two alien bounty hunters return (the second one taking on the guises of a voluptuous Playboy centerfold and a fast-food manager played by obnoxious 80’s uber-nerd Eddie Deezen along the way), accompanied by Don Keith Opper as former town drunk and newly-minted bounty hunter trainee Charlie, to finish what they started. Director and co-writer Mick Garris (prior to his status as Stephen King’s go-to guy in the 90’s) takes what could have a typically routine 80’s horror sequel and spices up the proceedings with improved puppetry and creature F/X, a zipper pace, funnier gags and a superior score (by Nicholas Pike). Like the underrated Child’s Play 2, it’s like a more polished, stylish second draft of the first film, and delivers more bang-for-the-buck in terms of genial monster-movie yuks and “yuck!”s. Two more direct-to-VHS cheapquels would follow in the early 90’s (which I don’t have time to go into this Halloween season), but these first two offer plenty of cheesy chills and chuckles.

-The Nightmare Before Christmas (1993): 11/10



The perfect melding of Tim Burton’s charmingly ghoulish imagination and the stop-motion wizardry of director Henry Selick (James & The Giant Peach, Coraline), The Nightmare Before Christmas is the perfect sweet dessert to chase another’s October crammed full of frights, shocks and scares. A charmingly cracked musical ode to the seasons of Halloween and Christmas, with a superb song score by Danny Elfman (who also provides the beautiful singing voice of Jack Skellington), brilliantly-detailed animation and a story that will enchant kids and adults alike. The ideal way to say adieu to another year. So, be safe trick-or-treating, watch out for T.P.’ers, and stay scared, kiddies…!

EIGHTY-TWO movies for October, a new record...!

[AndyDursin]

DUDE, you outdid yourself yet again! Fantabulous job, I envy you (though not with some of those films!)

I think you need to shoot for 100 next year. But start at Labor Day, you could get there

[Monterey Jack]

DUDE, you outdid yourself yet again! Fantabulous job, I envy you (though not with some of those films!)

Thank you. This is one of the cinematic projects I look forward to the most every year (along with the 24-hour film fest I attend at a friend's house every March). I hope, when your son is old enough, you'll be able to start introducing him to "the good stuff" when October rolls around every year.

I think you need to shoot for 100 next year. But start at Labor Day, you could get there

I always sneak in a handful of "appetizers" every September (especially wince WB has staked out the first weekend of the month for their annual fall horror title. Conjuring 3 next year...), but I only fully count titles I watch from October 1st through the 31st. I know some overzealous horror fans at Blu-Ray.com (where I share the same reviews I post here) star around August, but that's too much for even me. Of course, I still have plenty of leftovers, thanks to stupid studios like Arrow and Scream releasing highly-anticipated titles like An American Werewolf In London and The Blob for two days before Halloween. I was lucky to get the Critters boxed set just in time, and I would have had it yesterday if my lazy delivery driver had just put it next to my apartment door like every Amazon delivery I have ever received. Instead I had to pick it up at the post office this morning, and I'll have to do the same tomorrow for my Deep Discount order of The Blob and Batman Beyond tomorrow. And I won't get Werewolf and Two Evil Eyes until Monday (likely Tuesday).

[esteban miranda]

I intended to get to more seasonal titles this year but I don't like starting too early, and before I knew it, it's the 31st already!
My sole effort...
The Two Faces of Dr. Jekyll (1960) - 5/10

Pretty standard Jekyll/Hyde story, the twist in this one is Hyde is the more "normal" looking of the pair. Pretty frank dialogue and situations for a 1960 movie, maybe because it was a British production?

For extra credit, I did just get the new Tadlow CD of James Bernard's film scores Curse of Frankenstein and Dracula which I will be listening to (again) shortly...

[AndyDursin]

I hope, when your son is old enough, you'll be able to start introducing him to "the good stuff" when October rolls around every year.

I certainly hope to! At this point he seems to be freaked out by ALVIN & THE CHIPMUNKS MEET THE WOLFMAN.