Halloween Horror Marathon 2019

[Monterey Jack]

Halloween Horror Marathon '12

Halloween Horror Marathon '13

Halloween Horror Marathon '14

Halloween Horror Marathon '15

Halloween Horror Marathon '16

Halloween Horror Marathon '17

Halloween Horror Marathon '18



CHAPTER ONE: BE KIND, PLEASE REWIND

[camera zooms through the "A" in CHAPTER as we fade in to reveal...]

INT: MIKE'S BASEMENT, NIGHT

[title card reads "January 27th, 1985, Hawkins, Indiana"]

[The room is the typical Middle-American subterranean lair you'd expect for a family of five. A washing machine inhabits one shadowy corner, a basket of freshly-laundered unmentionables spilling out of a nearby basket. In another corner, a half-finished game of DUNGEONS & DRAGONS sits, biding its time. On one wall, a tattered but well-loved poster for the motion picture THE THING hangs from thumbtacks pushed into each corner. A rumpled yet comfortably broken-in sofa sits against the wall, facing a 13-inch TUBE TELEVISION SET with a VCR plugged into the back. The floor and end table are strewn with the kinds of detritus (STAR WARS toys, half-finished bags of DORITOS and cans of soda, comic books, a WALKIE-TALKIE set) that strongly indicate that a tween boy is one of the inhabitants of the house above. Cobwebs festoon the darkest corners. Blessed silence prevails, until the overhead lights SNAP ON, casting the winter gloom away.]

MIKE'S MOM; [off-screen] You kids wipe your feet before you even THINK of going downstairs! And be sure to vacuum up any crumbs you leave on the carpet!

MIKE: [off-screen] Okay, mom, jeez...!

[Bounding down the stairs with an adolescent's heedless abandon is MIKE WHEELER, 15, one of the home's inhabitants. Following in rapid order are DUSTIN HENDERSON, also 15 (in fact, all the friends that follow are approximately the same age), LUCAS SINCLAIR and WILL BYERS, Mike's best friends. They're inseparable.]

DUSTIN: [excited] Clear the table, someone...!

[MIKE and LUCAS swipe a scattering of potato chip bags and stray comics off the end table, leaving room for DUSTIN to place a snow-dusted bag in the now-free space. On the side is printed the legend HAWKINS VIDEO. The friends take off their jackets and boots and toss them in a democratic heap near the dryer as DUSTIN removes a handful of VHS TAPES, which he fans out in an attractive display on the end table]

WILL: There's nothing better than an all-night marathon of horror movies, especially when school's cancelled due to a blizzard!

DUSTIN: Especially when you've got an in with the store clerk...all rated "R", baby!

[LUCAS picks up a copy of THE THING with a "BE KIND, PLEASE REWIND" sticker affixed to the corner of the plastic rental case]

LUCAS: We've gotta watch this one first. It's SO much better than the original.

MIKE: Yeah, that one from the 50s is SO old.

WILL: ...and corny!

DUSTIN: Well, *I* like it. I kinda like "old-school" stuff.

LUCAS: You liked eating paste in third grade.

DUSTIN: HEY...!

MIKE: Come on, guys, let's not fight, we've gotta get some snacks together, and figure out what we'll play second.

WILL: [holds up copy of the 1978 INVASION OF THE BODY SNATCHERS] This one's super-creepy.

[LUCAS inspects the back of the case and tosses it onto the couch behind him]

LUCAS: Rated "PG", dude. Don't be a baby.

WILL: Have you actually SEEN it?

LUCAS: No...because I'm no longer five.

DUSTIN: It's got boobs...!

LUCAS: [double-take, reaches behind him to grab the tape and place it back on the end table] Wellll….maybe we can slot it in later.

[Suddenly the DOORBELL RINGS. Mike's mom answers and calls down the stairs]

MIKE'S MOM: [off-screen] MIKE! YOU HAVE COMPANY...!

[Mike looks around, counts on his fingers, frowns theatrically]

MIKE: All present and accounted for, right...?

[Coming down the stairs at a somewhat more sedate pace are MAX MAYFIELD, Lucas' brash squeeze, and ELLE HOPPER, Mike's more reserved, introverted girlfriend. Both girls shrug off their winter coats and toss them on the same pile near the dryer]

MAX: LUCAS! Why didn't you tell me you were watching movies tonight?!

LUCAS: [trying to hide his annoyance at "guys'-only" night being co-opted] Because this is kind of a tradition with us, the first big blizzard of the year, we come down here and watch dumb horror movies.

MAX: Cool. [she squeezes into a spot on the couch between Lucas and Dustin] My mom hates this kind of stuff, so I rarely get to watch it at home. [she leans forward to peruse the movie choices as Dustin and Lucas exchange an exasperated glance behind her back]

ELLE: Scary movies...?

WILL: Yeah, the bloodier, the better, with lots of gore and monsters!

[Elle shrinks back slightly, a glimmer of FEAR flickering across her features. Mike witnesses this, and takes her hand]

MIKE: Don't worry, Elle, you can sit on the couch next to me and hold my hand if you get scared.

[Elle visibly relaxes and gives Mike a tentative smile.]

ELLE: Promise...?

MAX: [looks up from her seat] Only room for four on this couch, guys. Sorry!

[Dustin and Lucas share another surreptitious glare at each other.]

MIKE: Don't worry, Elle. [he goes over the pile of finished laundry and starts digging through it] Where is it, where...aha! [he pulls out a couple of PILLOWS and a fluffy COMFORTER, both with that fresh, new-laundry smell. He returns to the couch and sets up a cozy little nest against the couch's bottom. He settles into it and holds out a hand to Elle]

MIKE: See! Snug as a bug in a rug!

[Elle sits down next to Mike and wraps herself in the blanket, then settles against his shoulder with a contented sigh. Meanwhile, Max lightly slaps Lucas' arm and gives him a disapproving look]

MAX: Would YOU have done that for ME...?

LUCAS: You're already ON the COUCH!

MAX: [rolling eyes] What-EV-er…

DUSTIN: [shaking head] Girlfriends. Hope *I* never get one.

WILL: You wish, Dustin...!

[Dustin removes his TRADEMARK HAT and throws it half-heartedly at Will as Elle inspects the LURID COVER ART of the horror movies on display, shivering a bit at the poster art for A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET, featuring a burn-faced, razor-fingered killer hovering over a teenage girl cowering in her bed]

ELLE: Scary...?

WILL: Oh yeah, that's a REALLY good one! It's about a dude who can kill people in their dreams! It's totally rad!

[Elle shrinks against Mike, who gives Will a disapproving look]

MIKE: [to Elle] Look, it's all make-believe. Makeup and animatronics and stuff. It can't hurt you.

ELLE: Annie-mah…?

MIKE:...tronics! Like, puppets and stuff.

ELLE: Like...Kermit?

MIKE: Uhhh...sort of. [Lucas and Dustin smirk at each other] The important thing is, these things you watch in movies are just actors pretending. Nothing bad really happens to them.

DUSTIN: Yeah, and besides...we've defeated REAL monsters.

LUCAS: Like the Demogorgon!

WILL: And the...Mind Flayer. [he touches the back of his neck as he says this, an odd look flickering across his face. The other kids don't notice as the conversation continues.]

MIKE: And those Demi-Dogs. Remember when you threw one through the window?

ELLE: Yes. [looks a little more confident]

LUCAS: See? A few silly movie monsters can't compare to those!

[Elle picks up a copy of Stephen King's FIRESTARTER and inspects the cover, seemingly empathizing with the grave young girl printed on the box]

ELLE: Movies. Not real.

DUSTIN: Totally!

[Dustin opens another bag and spreads a repast of KID'S SNACKS across the end table, consisting of a variety POTATO CHIPS, DORITOS, REESE'S PIECES, YODELS and two six-packs of NEW COKE]

MIKE: So, if you get too scared, remember...we're here to keep you safe.

[Elle snuggles against Mike beneath the blanket, who BLUSHES FURIOUSLY.]

ELLE: [sighs] Friends.

DUSTIN: So, can we start already?! It's already getting towards 7:00 PM. If we wanna get these back before the late fees are due, we've gotta get cracking.

WILL: Dude...if school is cancelled tomorrow, do you think the video store will be open?

[Dustin opens his mouth to reply, then snaps it shut abruptly as he thinks.]

DUSTIN: [sighs] Son of a bitch.

[Lucas laughs. Mike snags a can of NEW COKE, cracks it open, takes a sip, and screws his face up as Will grabs a random tape and slams it into the VCR. Max rests her head against Lucas' shoulder as Dustin opens a bag of Doritos and passes it around. Elle looks with a childlike WONDER as the FBI WARNING at the beginning of the tape -- a fuzzy line of static jittering at the bottom of the screen due to the VCR's wonky tracking -- gradually fades away to reveal...the 2019 Halloween Horror Marathon]

[Monterey Jack]

This year's thread is in loving memory of Al Hedison. "Help me...!"

[AndyDursin]

Poor Al. Grew up in Matunuck RI right near me.

[Monterey Jack]

Also one of only two actors to portray Felix Leiter in the James Bond films more than once (albeit separated by sixteen years).

[Monterey Jack]

Time to float...



-It (2017): 8.5/10

Second adaptation of Stephen King's gargantuan doorstop of a novel (previously made into a 1990 miniseries that, despite network TV restrictions, was nevertheless a ratings smash and a reasonably satisfying "Cliff's Notes" version of King's epic text) was an equally gargantuan success at the box office (it's the highest-grossing R-rated horror film of all time by a significant margin), and it's not hard to see why. Concerning a "Loser's Club" of outcast kids who run afoul of a fiendish, evil force that inhabits their small hometown of Derry, Maine that most often takes the form of a leering clown named Pennywise (Bill Skarsgard), It is a canny mix of rose-colored Nostalgia Porn (the idyllic late-1950s setting of the book and miniseries updated to the late 80s, inadvertently cashing in on the unexpected Stranger Things gravy train), R-rated Goosebumps episode and E.C. horror comic. Buried deep within the story's structure is a lovely metaphor for overcoming childhood fears (that won't be fully explored until this film's second "Chapter" opens in theaters, with the film's child actors replaced by their contemporary adult doppelgangers), yet the resulting film isn't quite a Stand By Me-level classic, merely a very good popcorn horror flick blessed with a gaggle of fine child performances (including Stranger Things alum Finn Wolfhard and the fetchingly grave Sophia Lillis) and sleek, stylish direction by Andy Muschietti (Mama) that allows the film to have ample breathing room for well-played character development in-between the multiplex shockeroo setpieces. Holding together the shocks is Skarsgard's performance as Pennywise. Tim Curry put an indelible stamp upon the role with his sinister mugging in the 1990 miniseries, but Skarsgard thankfully makes the role his own. With his triangular knife slash of a grin and slightly walleyed gaze, he makes for a memorably freaky antagonist, even if you wish he was allowed more opportunity to verbally spar with his adolescent prey as opposed to merely emitting a series of shrill, high-pitched giggles. When he's allowed more dialogue, he's quite good, and I hope that Chapter 2 gives him more leeway to let his freak flag fly. Then again, in both the novel and miniseries, the "adults" segments of the story have been...problematic, and the second film's absurd 165+ minute(!) runtime seems to indicate a certain amount of gluttony on the behalf of the film's director and studio, so thrilled by the wild success of the first film that they're allowing Muschietti to go hog-wild with the property. And I'm sure that Chapter 2 is gonna make a mint this weekend (I certainly have my matinee screening all planned out), but here's hoping that the filmmakers can stick the landing better than the limp, dissatisfying conclusion of the miniseries. We'll always have this terrific first half, though.

[AndyDursin]

IT CHAPTER TWO
7.5/10

Some quick informal thoughts (my "formal review" is in the other thread) --

Though overlong by a good 20 minutes (I could've used less of the funhouse corpses) and surprisingly lighter in tone (much lighter in fact), this gets the job done. Effective use of flashbacks to reintegrate the kids from the original (albeit with some obvious and at times awkward looking digital FX work)..And the ending is highly satisfying...thankfully since the whole running (in)joke of the movie is that the writer character played as an adult by McAvoy can't write a good ending!

The adult cast is just OK though Bill Hader is terrific. I wish the roles played by McAvoy and the no longer fat kid were cast with that kind of energy...I felt the two of them were bland, though Chastain was perfectly serviceable. Weirdly the climax reminded me of the TV mini series just with better effects! Strange cameo by Peter Bogdanovich (why?) too.

In all, job well done by Andy Muschetti. This isn't as potent as the first part, and I think people were laughing more than being scared (again, I was surprised how much humor there was throughout the film, not just from Hader's performance), but it's still entertaining and the last half hour delivers all the goods, even as silly and overstuffed as portions of it are.

I did worry, when it was wrapping up, that he was going to ruin it with some added twist or shock effect (I kept thinking "end it here" over and over again), but he didn't. Muschietti gets a thumbs up even if this is a much wilder affair, though it kind of had to be...also the climax is very similar to the 1990 mini-series, just with much (obviously) better effects.

[Monterey Jack]

-It Chapter 2 (2019): 8/10



Second half of this gargantuan adaptation of Stephen King's novel (seriously...this installment in nearly as long as the ENTIRE three-hour 1990 ABC miniseries!) is maybe a sliver less enjoyable than the first. It's self-indulgent to a fault, with a plot that's at once overstuffed and also skims over some surprising elements from that miniseries and novel (like Bill's wife Audra, never seen again after a brief scene towards the beginning) while also adding some surreal comic elements that sometimes don't gel with the more gruesome horror aspects (these feel tacked-on, like the studio wanted some Freddy Krueger-style puns for this old-new horror "franchise", if you can count two self-contained movies as such). And yet the talented adult cast acquit themselves admirably (and are spot-on matches for their kid counterparts, all of whom reprise their roles for significant flashbacks marred only slightly by sometimes-unconvincing MCU-style "de-aging" tech). Director Andy Muschietti and screenwriter Gary Dauberman do an impressive job weaving together past and present in a manner similar to another excellent King adaptation, Dolores Claiborne, and the film delivers the requisite fun-house shocks (sometimes quite literally, in the case of one memorable scene set in a hall of mirrors) and some moving character interplay keeping the film's massive runtime humming along quite nicely (honestly, I never checked my watch once). Considering how the miniseries sputtered out in its concluding moments (with low-budget made-for-TV F/X that looked lousy even at the time), this new It, while deviating from the source material, nevertheless has a far more visually-satisfying and slam-bang conclusion. It ain't the book, but nothing realistically could have been barring a ten-hour miniseries done for HBO, so for what restrictions Muschietti had for this project, he did a commendable job. Whuh-HA...!

[Monterey Jack]

I did worry, when it was wrapping up, that he was going to ruin it with some added twist or shock effect (I kept thinking "end it here" over and over again), but he didn't.

I was worried there'd be some last-minute "It's not over..." stinger to stretch this out into a third installment, but thankfully everyone involved didn't stoop to that. How refreshing to see a horror "franchise" that has a definitive and satisfying conclusion after only two installments instead of petering out over the course of a decade's worth of increasingly-crummy sequels.

[AndyDursin]

I did worry, when it was wrapping up, that he was going to ruin it with some added twist or shock effect (I kept thinking "end it here" over and over again), but he didn't.

I was worried there'd be some last-minute "It's not over..." stinger to stretch this out into a third installment, but thankfully everyone involved didn't stoop to that. How refreshing to see a horror "franchise" that has a definitive and satisfying conclusion after only two installments instead of petering out over the course of a decade's worth of increasingly-crummy sequels.

I'm not going to give them credit, necessarily, for retaining the end of the book and the TV version -- I mean, the story DOES end, but I agree, it's nice they didn't feel the need to put a dumb "horror movie stinger" on there. Of course, they COULD still make another one -- people seem to have forgotten you can make sequels even without a cliffhanger ending these days...but let's hope this is IT, for lack of a better term.

I do think the adult cast was a mixed bag and held it back somewhat. Good thing the kids were brought back so often or it would've been a bigger issue.

McAvoy's casting to me was a mistake. I felt it when he was first cast and felt it even more so after sitting through the film. He's totally over-exposed at this point -- people know him from SPLIT/GLASS and X-MEN. He seems to be everywhere, and I didn't think he worked in that part. I felt like I was watching McAvoy himself throughout -- not at all the grown-up version of the kid from the original. Chastain is everywhere too, but Muschietti has an association with her, and it seemed to be an obvious fit (if maybe too obvious). Jay Ryan? Some bland New Zealand-ite? He looked like any "dude off the street", and was no more than serviceable.

Where the casting worked was Bill Hader -- and surprise, they took a total page out of the 1990 TV version casting a "comedy guy" in the part, right in line with the likes of John Ritter, Harry Anderson and Tim Reid. Hader's line delivery was spot on, and watching him stretch dramatically and react to the story made him, at least for me, far more identifiable and appealing than the other adults that were cast.

This movie was going to make money no matter what, so unless Warner Bros. was dictating the choices, I think Muschietti missed the boat not casting other leads "off the beaten path" a little bit instead of the obvious "star choices" in Chastain and especially McAvoy, plus someone right out of central casting like Ryan.

[Monterey Jack]

Binged the recent Hulu series Castle Rock over the last week, hoping that the intriguing premise of trying together many classic Stephen King characters and locations would make for some good, creepy seasonal viewing...and HATED it. Leaden, pretentious, confusing and seeming to last for twenty episodes rather than ten, it has none of the folksy, cheerfully vulgar humor that percolates through King's best fiction, and despite a fine cast and sleek production values it just lays there, totally inert. If there's another season, I certainly won't be tuning in.

[AndyDursin]

It was a huge disappointment, that's for sure.

Waiting to get the Blu-Ray of THE STAND in, to see how that fares.

[Monterey Jack]

Waiting to get the Blu-Ray of THE STAND in, to see how that fares.

The usual bitch-fest going on over that on the Blu-Ray.com forums. "Only one disc?!? No lossless sound?!? Cancelling my pre-order...!"

As far as Castle Rock goes, I was far more enamored of Hulu's recent adaptation of King's 11/22/63, which changed a lot from the text but thankfully kept the wistfully bittersweet coda I loved from the book.

[Monterey Jack]

Its Friday the 13th...good enough reason to get in a few more pre-October appetizers.

Reduce, reuse, recycle…



-The Omen (2006): 5/10

-Carrie (2013): 5.5/10





“Stop me if you’ve heard this one.”

There’s a good reason why people often preface relating a good joke to someone with the phrase listed above, and it’s because there’s a certain degree of pointlessness to going through the trouble of delivering all of the prefatory setup when the person you’re telling the joke to already knows the punchline. A pair of remakes of a pair of classic 1976 horror films should have heeded this advice, hewing so close to their cinematic ancestors that they come across as leaden, faded copies of films that still invoke equal doses of knuckle-gnawing fear and squirmy empathy.

The perfunctory 2006 remake of The Omen (given a gimmicky release date of June 6th, 2006. Think about it…) hews so close to Richard Donner’s 1976 original that the only screenwriting credit on the film belongs to the original movie’s writer, David Seltzer. Oh, it’s all well-crafted enough, with veteran hack director John Moore (who did a much better job remaking another Fox property with his underrated 2004 version of The Flight Of The Phoenix) doing an efficient job mimicking Donner’s sleek, elegant framing on the 70s film (so much so that his token “special thanks to” credit in the end titles should have been upgraded to a co-directing credit. This isn’t a Gus Van Sant Psycho-style Xerox, but it comes damn close), but it does so little to differentiate itself from its predecessor that this “updated” version seems every bit as dated as the original. When David Thewlis’ photographer shows Liev Schreiber’s Robert Thorn the photos of Pete Postlethwaite’s priest with a “sinister” line of light cutting into his body, by the mid-00s, shouldn’t the first words out of Schreiber’s mouth have been, “Photoshop fake…?” Schreiber, meanwhile, delivers a fine, modulated performance, but he simply lacks the iconic gravitas that Gregory Peck brought to the original, his mere presence enough to elevate a shocking, exploitation demonic horror movie into something worth serious discussion over. I wish I could have as nice things to say about Julia Stiles as Thorn’s wife, Kathy. Stiles has never been a particularly charismatic actress, but what really sabotages her performance is that she’s ABSURDLY young for the role, twenty-five at the time but still looking about sixteen. It’s incredibly hard to buy a woman who still looks like she should be doing her math homework as the mother of a five-year-old boy (Seamus Davey-Fitzpatrick as a blankly ominous Damien), and she does little to truly sell her character’s increasing paranoia and despondency. Watching this movie, I kept imagining what a pair of more age-appropriate actors would have added to it, like the What Lies Beneath re-teaming of Harrison Ford and Michelle Pfeiffer. Schreiber is good in the film, but imagine seeing a cinematic icon like Ford driven to the point where he considers murdering his own son for the betterment of mankind. Sadly, this movie is content to mimic the past instead of truly reshaping it to frighten a new generation of moviegoers, and The Omen ’06 stands as the perfect example of a remake that is truly pointless. I can think of horror remakes that are far WORSE, but at least most of those do SOMEthing different with that material, and thus have their own queer integrity.

Meanwhile, the 2013 riff on the classic Stephen King novel Carrie, from director Kimberly Peirce (Boys Don’t Cry), may be a sliver better than The Omen, but, like that film is so handcuffed to Brian De Palma’s masterful 1976 adaptation that it never develops any identity of its own (and – again! – is so close to the structure and even specific dialogue of the original that De Palma’s screenwriter, Lawrence D. Cohen, receives a co-writing credit). This new film is well-cast, with Chloe Grace Moretz as sodden wallflower Carrie White and Julianne Moore as a brittle, self-mutilating Margaret White, and it all unfolds with reasonable competence, but when you’ve had the Filet Mignon of King’s clumsy but impassioned novel, or De Palma’s mournfully poetic, dread-soaked film adaptation, why settle for the Big Mac version? And, I’m sorry, but Moretz is simply too pretty to be believable as a wounded sad sack who no boy would want to date and who is a perennial punch bag for her clique of high-school Mean Girl tormentors. All of the unkempt hair and boxy ill-fitting clothes in the world can’t disguise those cherubic lips or her perfect, blemish-free skin, and this the image of her scurrying through the hallways with hunched shoulders and a perpetual anticipatory grimace of misery come across as faintly absurd. Much of the power of the 70s film came from Sissy Spacek’s truly eerie, alien presence, and while Spacek was certainly an attractive woman in her day, she did a far more convincing job making her Carrie into someone you could imagine spending her middle and high school years with a perpetual “KICK ME” sign affixed to her back. And the rest of the 1976 version’s effect came from De Palma’s bravura staging of the material, taking a low-budget exploitation cheapie and filming it with a voluptuous, candy-colored craftsmanship that gave it the quality of a beautiful-yet-horrible nightmare (Pino Donaggio’s gorgeously lyrical score only adds to the film’s dreamy atmosphere, which Marco Beltrami’s mechanically generic music for the new version can’t come close to touching. And – hey, whaddaya know? – he also had the same thankless duties on The Omen ‘06, providing blandly proficient sonic wallpaper in lieu of Jerry Goldsmith’s Oscar-winning music to the original). And Peirce shows little affinity for orchestrating the film’s F/X to make the famous, bloody climax from the ’76 film into anything more than a lightly R-rated MCU movie. One half-expects there to be a post-credits stinger with Chloe clawing her way out of the grave to find Samuel L. Jackson waiting there to offer her a slot in the Avenger Initiative. That’s the biggest flaw of this new version…in the era of Lollapalooza special effects, the idea of a girl who can manipulate objects with her mind is no longer a revelatory miracle, it’s just another superhero origin story, only one with a “tragic” conclusion foiled by an UPBEAT ROCK SONG playing over the end credits! This new Carrie, like The Omen, is a soulless rerun, content to be Carrie’d along in the slipstream of its famous source material while adding nothing of any value to the experience. But hey, to heed that old 90s NBC sitcom saying during the summer rerun season, “If you haven’t seen it, it’s new to you…!

[AndyDursin]

I think my Halloween viewing with Theo will be limited to ALVIN & THE CHIPMUNKS MEET FRANKENSTEIN and THE WOLFMAN

[Monterey Jack]

Just...



...to go.