Halloween Horror Marathon 2022

[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

Halloween Horror Marathon '19

Halloween Horror Marathon '20

Halloween Horror Marathon '21



[INT., PUBLIC RESTROOM, DAY[?]]

A bank of overhead fluorescent lights snap on one by one (several flickering erratically) to gradually reveal the image of a public restroom, one clearly residing within a long-abandoned building. The floors are coated with mucky grime, the tiles chipped wherever they're not missing entirely. The sinks are filled with gunk, the cracked mirrors so filmed with untold years' worth of condensation that they reflect no images back...not that you'd want them to. Most of the doors leading to the individual stalls are missing, save one, which hangs crookedly from a single rusty hinge. Said door is covered from top to bottom - on both sides - with graffiti that is alternately eloquent and profane. The toilets hold no water, just rings that indicate where the ghosts of waters past once resided. Every visible surface looks ready to ensure anyone daring to touch it will require a tetanus shot. All-in-all, not a place one would wish to conduct necessary bodily functions unless it were a dire emergency.

As the long-dormant lights reveal more of the room, in one corner is suddenly revealed the shape of a MAN, who is lying slumped in a murky puddle of water left dripping from a crack in the ceiling. In sharp contrast to the room in which the man currently resides, he is immaculately dressed in a nice, three-piece suit. A Burberry jacket, expensive loafers, a glittering gold watch that looks like it might have cost the monthly rent of the entire building the bathroom is contained within in better times. His face remains hidden to the audience, but we can see that the remnants of his thinning hair are meticulously slicked back. Some six feet away from him, a small TUBE TELEVISION SET has been set onto a small chair, its extension cord - augmented by several extensions - snakes out underneath the bathroom's closed door to points unknown.

The unpleasant buzzing of the flickering lights causes the man to showcase signs of life, raising his head groggily. He, with great care, extricates himself from the brackish puddle he is lying in and sits with his back braced against the wall. His ICY BLUE EYES scan the room with a surprising lack of...surprise at his surroundings. He looks down at his damp jacket and trouser legs with clear distaste, checks the time on his watch (pleased that it's still on his wrist), feels around in his pockets for his billfold (still there, still filled with money and credit cards), examines his head and body for signs of injury (nothing, aside from an unpleasant, lingering taste in his mouth, undoubtedly from whatever was placed in the otherwise lovely bottle of Chardonnay that was delivered to his hotel room the previous(?) night), then, crossing his ankles (one of which is securely manacled to a nearby pipe), simply...sits. Waiting patiently for some form of explanation as to his current predicament. He does not have to wait long, as the television set suddenly blinks on, revealing...

[CLOSE-UP, TELEVISION SCREEN]

We see the image of a PUPPET. It's a puppet with a shock of black frizzy hair and a bone-white face offset by a pair of spiral patterns emblazoned on each cheek. It is clad in a miniature, funereal-black suit with a bowtie with the same ruby red shade as the spiral patterns. Its SOULLESS DEAD EYES are also red, and they suddenly rotate in their sockets to look upon the man in the bathroom. It speaks to him in a corroded, electronically-processed voice that makes it impossible to identify the person behind it]

PUPPET: Hello...Doctor Lecter.

[The man smiles. It is a thin, cold, calculating smile.]

HANNIBAL LECTER: [in an elegant, politely conversational tone] Hello. I'm afraid you have me at a bit of a disadvantage.

PUPPET: I have gone to great lengths to finally meet you. It took much research to follow the bodies left in your wake, the lives left shattered by your psychiatry practice. You have covered your tracks quite well, but not quite well enough, as we see.

HANNIBAL: I ascertained that as well. Now, you have my undivided attention. I have appointments to keep, but they can wait until our...business is finished. I realize that giving me your real name is probably not advantageous for you, but would an alias suffice so as to make out conversation a tad less..awkward?

PUPPET: You may call me...Jigsaw.

HANNIBAL: I suppose there's some backstory to that, but as our time together may be brief, we can dispense with such formalities. Now...how may I help you, Jigsaw? If you are in need of psychiatric counselling, there are easier ways to make an appointment. And they would not have required you to ruin a very nice suit.

PUPPET/JIGSAW: For that, my apologies, Dr. Lecter.

HANNIBAL: Please, I insist that my captors refer to me by Christian name.

JIGSAW: Very well...Hannibal. Now our little game can commence, provided that the seconal has completely worn off?

HANNIBAL: Ah, so that's what it was. [he smacks his lips, savoring the residual taste left in his mouth] An excellent choice.

JIGSAW: I'm glad we share similar tastes in drugs, Hannibal. They do the job efficiently. I'm just surprised you were unable to detect it in the bottle I sent you.

HANNIBAL: Oh, I knew it there from the first cautious sip.

JIGSAW: But...

HANNIBAL: ...why did I continue to enjoy the Chardonnay? For one, it's a shame to waste even a single glass of such a fine vintage. Secondly, I was...curious.

JIGSAW: [confusion somehow registers through the buzzing, electronic voice] Curious.

HANNIBAL: Yes. Many have tried to track me down over the years, despite all of my precautions, but most have simply attempted to claim the reward. It's quite sizable, and the one who received it would be extremely well off. But no, you decided to drug me. You were not interested in claiming a financial windfall, you wanted me for other purposes. And as I've woken up in my current accommodations - [he holds his arm out to indicate the skeevy bathroom] - instead of handcuffed inside of a jail cell, I must admit I am very interested to see what's going to happen next.

JIGSAW: Ah. It's not often that one of my...subjects showcases more curiosity than fear. That will make this year's experiment all the more intriguing.

HANNIBAL: So, what's it to be? Considering the ankle chain, [raises leg to accentuate] I am to assume the nature of the experiment is to be very unpleasant.

JIGSAW: Oh yes, it will be exceedingly unpleasant. It will, in fact, revolve around the television set you're looking at right now.

[Hannibal raises an appreciative eyebrow]

JIGSAW: Today is October 1st. This month's experiment revolves around the human capacity for watching bad horror movies.

[Hannibal's face falls, almost imperceptibly]

HANNIBAL: [repeating] Horror movies. Bad ones.

JIGSAW: Some of the worst. You will in fact, be subjected to some of the worst horror films ever created by man. A non-stop flood of them, 24/7, until October 31st, when you will be released.

HANNIBAL: [mulling it over] I see. Not at all what I was expecting. Wouldn't setting me up to be consumed slowly by wild boars be a bit more fun?

JIGSAW: [scoffs] Like anyone would try something *that* illogical. Pure comic book nonsense.

HANNIBAL: And to what end? I hardly think watching inferior horror cinema is enough to make one beg for mercy.

JIGSAW: That's just the tip of the iceberg. Each film you see will contain a clue hidden somewhere within. One that pertains to an avenue for escaping the room you are currently residing in. This bathroom is just one of many rooms contained within this building. Each one is studded with traps. Some mildly irritating, others lethal. A quiz will follow each film. If you get enough answers right, the chain around your ankle will be released, the door will open, and you will be allowed into the next chamber. Get too many wrong... [He lets this ominous phrase hang in the air for a beat before continuing] A brief respite will follow to allow for necessary sleep. Then it will be onto the next day's torrent of feculent scary movies.

HANNIBAL: [musing] You're a film critic, aren't you?

JIGSAW: No...merely an amateur. A fan interested in sharing a hobby. And, just to alleviate the mental torture, you will sometimes find an authentically GOOD film hidden within the onslaught of schlock. Yet even these will contain vital clues.

HANNIBAL: Any particular theme to the selected films?

JIGSAW: On a day-to-day basis, perhaps. Sometimes it will be at my completely random whim. And be sure to take notes...there WILL be a quiz later. Popcorn and soda will be provided at set intervals to keep your energy levels. However, the popcorn will be stale, the soda flat.

HANNIBAL: Goody-goody.

JIGSAW: On that note, it's time for the seasonal festivities to begin. Keep your eyes on the screen, please, and our feature presentation - the first of many - will begin shortly.

HANNIBAL: I do hope I am able to weather the entire month. I would so like to meet you and discuss the films I am about to partake of...over dinner. [This is said with a lascivious glint in his eyes]

JIGSAW: Good luck, Doctor, and put your mental skills to the test...it's going to get grisly.

[With this, the image of the Jigsaw puppet vanishes, replaced with snow and the buzz of static. Hannibal folds his hands primly on his stomach, adjusts his legs as far as the ankle chain will allow him, and settles in, a funny little smile on his face. Suddenly the static vanishes, replaced by an FBI warning screen. With this, we, and the good Doctor are ushered into...the 2022 Horror Movie Marathon.]

[This year's Halloween Marathon is dedicated to the memories of David Warner, Fred Ward, Anne Heche, Clu Gulager, Ray Liotta, Joe Turkel, WIlliam Hurt, Ivan Reitman and James Caan]

[Monterey Jack]

The Invitation (2022): 5/10



Good-looking but empty gothic chiller about a financially-strapped NYC artist named Evelyn "Evie" Jackson (Nathalie Emmanuel) who, utilizing an online DNA testing site on a whim, finds out she's the distant relative of a well-to-do English clan, and flies - on their dime - to meet them at a family wedding. Her attraction to the suave host Walter De Ville (Thomas Doherty) grows at the same pace as her increasing unease at the lavish - and remote - mansion, which seems to have secrets and portents of doom hidden in each dark corner, as the true nature of her presence at the forthcoming festivities come to light.

A well-made film, with adequate acting and great production design, The Invitation nevertheless squanders a solid set-up by telegraphing where it's all going early on, thus whatever mild tension is developed in the early reels is allowed to dissipate. It all plays like a less-fun riff on 2019's Ready Or Not, only tamed down for an anemic PG-13 rating and relying on scares that are wearyingly rote (character shows up unexpectedly in the shot? BOOM, goes the subwoofer!), not to mention one limp noodle of an epilogue that's supposed to carry a "We're takin' the battle to them!" charge, but just comes across as a sequel tease that will never be realized considering how poorly this film did dumped in the waning days of August. Not terrible, but nothing you haven't seen before, and better.

[AndyDursin]

Happy Halloween! Always excited to see this thread year in and year out.

[Monterey Jack]

Happy Halloween! Always excited to see this thread year in and year out.

Thank you, Good Sir! It's always a pleasure to do these, and I wanted to get it in early, as - annoying as always - there are more horror movies released in theaters in September than October proper.

[Monterey Jack]

-Barbarian (2022): 9/10



Wild, matryoshka doll of a thriller kicks off with a young woman, Tess Marshall (Georgina Campbell), arriving at a Detroit house in a run-down neighborhood she's rented while out for a job interview, only to wake a very confused man, Keith Toshiko (Bill "Pennywise" Skarsgard), who claims that he has also rented the house. After confirming the agency made a mistake in having their rental dates fall in the same week, they warily agree to share the domicile until the following morning when they can call up the agency to complain, but the following day, Tess makes a startling discovery in the basement...

...and this is as far as I'm willing to go in describing the film's plot, as it takes a series of wild, out-of-left-field turns that are best experienced as cold as possible. What seems like a set-up for a standard can-my-housemate-be-trusted? thriller - following a truly shocking incident - suddenly (and jarringly) lurches into a seemingly unrelated narrative thread...which in and of itself is interrupted by yet another narrative cul de sac that brings it all together for a bravura finale. Writer/director Zach Cregger runs a gamut of emotions, from slow-burn suspense in the first third to a darkly comic digression involving some #Metoo-era concerns in the second and a disturbingly eerie final reel full of grand guignol touches (capped with an inspired choice for an end-title song). It's one of the most ingeniously-constructed horror films in recent memory, and one full of sustained suspense and gruesome shocks. Many will be utterly thrown by how the narrative skews all over the road, but it all makes sense by the end, and will probably play better on a second viewing, even if the first will be hard to top for the sheer WTF?ery of its screenplay leaps and bounds. It's one of the best horror films I've seen all year, and deserves to be a success amongst genre aficionados willing to go with the flow.

[Paul MacLean]

A Quite Place Part II (7.5/10)

Like the first film, this is a more-than-solid nail biter. But unlike the first film there are fewer surprises. The plot involving an old friend (Cillian Murphy) who refuses to help Emily Blunt and her family, but then relents, does make for some good character development however. I also liked how the film addressed the way this "alien invasion" brings-out the venal, selfish survival instincts in some people -- making them almost as big a threat as the aliens themselves, but this isn't as satisfactorily-explored as I would have liked.

Was nice to see Djimon Hounsou, though his role amounts to little more than a thankless cameo.

And there something about this movie I question. The family all go barefoot so as not to make noise as they walk. That makes sense, but wouldn't it make more sense to wear shoes and just wear thick socks over them to soften the sound -- especially when the daughter's feet get cut-up and bloodied from walking on railroad tracks for hours? Though why doesn't she walk in the nice, soft grass adjacent to the tracks? And why can't the aliens hear Cillian Murphy -- who wears boots throughout the whole film?

Oh well. In any case, like the first film A Quiet Place Part II remains an a very good thriller. It may not reinvent the wheel, but it is effective and genuinely frightening -- like a really excellent Twilight Zone episode.

[AndyDursin]

Exactly my sentiments Paul. Basically the same film that didn't push the concept forward at all, which was a disappointment and a bit deflating.

[Monterey Jack]

It may not mark the spot, but it sure hits it...

-X (2022): 9/10



Engagingly brutal exercise in rural horror finds a small film crew (circa 1979), arriving at a remote farmhouse in Texas, where boorish producer Wayne Gilroy (Martin Henderson) hopes to make his own profitable Debbie Does Dallas splash by shooting a quickie porno in the rustic surroundings. He's got his cast, including girlfriend Maxine (willowy Mia Goth) and adult-movie thespian couple Bobbie-Lynne (Brittany Snow) and Jackson Hole (Scott "Kid Cudi" Mescudi) and crew, including ambitious screenwriter and director R.J. Nichols (Owen Campbell), and timid boom operator Lorraine (2022 horror ingenue find Jenna Ortega, also seen in this year's Scream 5 and in the title role of the forthcoming Tim Burton Netflix miniseries Wednesday), in tow, and they're enthusiastic to get down to business, in both senses of the term. Wayne's rented the guest house of the elderly farmer Howard (Stephen Ure) and his wife, Pearl (Goth again, in impressive old-age prosthetics), keeping the prurient nature of their film shoot on the down-low, and they quickly set to in making their ponographic opus "The Farmer's Daughter" into a reality...but their decrepit hosts are far less frail than they initially seem, and as the day gives way to night, their porno shoot turns into something akin to The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, as the cast and crew find themselves picked off one by one in memorably gruesome ways.

Writer/director/co-editor Ti West (The House Of The Devil, The Innkeepers) makes a long-overdue return to the horror genre in this highly entertaining backwoods quasi-slasher, with game performances and enthusiastic spurts of gore. Like all of West's work, it's more elegant that one would be led to believe by the standards of the genre, teasing out moments of suspense with fiendish elan (and, in a split-screen sequence about halfway through juxtaposing a film crew sing-along with Pearl stroking her hair and preparing for bed, surprisingly eloquent). Mostly, it's just fun in a way that doesn't descend into outright mockery while still earning some Sam Raimi-esque howls at particular exaggerated physical pratfalls. West shot a back-to-back prequel, Pearl, which will start unspooling in theaters tomorrow, and will soon engage in a sequel, MaXXXine, set for release next year, and if X is any indication of where we're headed, we may be in for one of the all-time great horror movie trilogies. Bloody, satiric grand guignol fun.

[Monterey Jack]

-Pearl (2022): 10/10



The second film in writer/director/editor Ti West's chronologically-jumbled horror triptych is an even more wildly entertaining exercise than this spring's X. That film wallowed in post-Watergate late 1970s malaise, while this one travels back in time to 1918 (during an earlier, country-crippling Pandemic) and finds the elderly Pearl (Mia Goth) from the previous movie when she was a young woman working on her Germanic parents' rural farm. Her husband serving in the Great War, Pearl is left alone, spending what little free time she has dreaming of being on the Silver Screen and being adored by millions even as her stern mother (Tandi Wright) chastises her for her frivolous fantasties and for not doting on her paralyzed father (Matthew Sunderland) as much as she should. But Pearl won't let anything - anything - keep her from achieving her goals, and her percolating dissatisfaction over her lot in life continues to simmer until it boils over in a heated confrontation with her mother that kicks off a string of violence that plumbs the darkest corners of Pearl's ambitions.

Pearl is a movie that's a wild tonal and stylistic shift from West's previous one. That movie revelled in the grindhouse scuzziness of the decade in which it was set, while this one harkens back to the Golden Era of Hollywood, replete with old-timey title cards, usage of wipe and iris out scene transitions and a wonderful score by Tyler Bates and Tim WIlliams that fuses the swoony emotional crescendos of a Max Steiner or Franz Waxman with the groaning, motivic suspense chords of Bernard Herrmann. It all comes down on the willowy shoulders of Goth (who shares screenplay credit with director West), who crafts a character who is daft, touchingly naive, and evokes the tremulous self-loathing of Sissy Spacek in Carrie (a key sequence between mother and daughter is a direct reference to Brian De Palma's classic). She's given a lengthy, tear-choked monologue late in the proceedings - captured in a tight, unbroken closeup - that's honestly one of the rawest, most mesmerising pieces of acting I have seen in any movie this year. Pearl is a movie that opens on a note of borderline kitsch that deepens into a poignant display of thwarted dreams, even as it ends on a darkly funny sick joke. If the forthcoming MaXXXine can stick the landing, this trilogy of terror tales may go down as one of the most interesting and successful series of horror films ever done. Highest recommendations!

[Monterey Jack]

[Monterey Jack]

Hakuna MaTERROR...!!!

-The Ghost & The Darkness (1996): 8/10



In 1898, Lt. Colonel John Patterson (Val Kilmer) is dispatched by his British superior (a smarmy Tom Wilkinson) to supervise the construction of a bridge in far off Tsavo, Kenya, in order to keep the British expansion into Africa ahead of their competition. Despite it meaning he'll have to leave his pregnant wife (Emily Mortimer) behind for months, Patterson yearns to see the African plains for himself, and makes the arduous journey to find a disorganized campsite rife with religious and racial tensions between the various African, Muslim and Indian workers. Yet through his dogged perseverance, he's able to cut through the simmering distrust and gets the bridge project humming right along...until a pair of ravenous, lions start tearing their way through the workers. Dubbed "The Ghost & The Darkness" by the superstitious natives, the pair of man-eaters have an almost unerring skill for avoiding all attempts at setting traps, and the construction grinds to a halt, causing Patterson's irate superiors to hire the services of Remington (Michael Douglas), a celebrated big game hunter from America who arrives to help Patterson take down his feline foes and get the railway project chugging along again.

A career high point for middling genre hack Stephen Hopkins (A Nightmare On Elm Street 5, Predator 2, the godawful Lost In Space movie), The Ghost & The Darkness is a beautifully-produced film in all respects, with its ravishing African locations captured by the gifted cinematographer Vilmos Zsigmond and set to a superb Jerry Goldsmith score, one that fuses elements of Africa, England and Lt. Patterson's native Ireland into a seamlessly unified whole and rife with the kinds of dangling, eerie effects that stock classic Goldsmith horror efforts like Alien and The Omen. Screenwriter William Goldman hews surprisingly close to the real-life historical events as chronicled in Patterson's book (even if Douglas' character is entirely fictionalized), and Hopkins stages sequences of snarling lion attacks with hair-raising finesse. Kilmer (speaking in a lilting Irish brogue) and Douglas (as a kind of scruffy Quint of the Serengeti) make for a winningly odd-couple pairing, Kilmer's taciturn professionalism nicely clashing with Douglas' charismatic hamming that would make his dad proud. The resulting movie isn't high art - supposedly at least 40 minutes or more of footage was removed late in the game, reducing what was intended to be a David Lean-style epic into a mere monster flick - yet it's a really good mere monster flick, full of tense situations, engaging performances and stunning African vistas. And while some of the F/X shots comping real lions into the frame with Kilmer and Douglas look a bit janky, today those lions would be 100% computer generated, so I'm willing to overlook them.

[Monterey Jack]

Fandom at maximum toxicity...

-Misery (1990): 8.5/10



Paul Sheldon (the late, great James Caan), a career novelist, has kept a roof over his head and food on his plate with a series of wildly popular bodice-ripper romance novels starring the flighty beauty Misery Chastain, yet yearns to write something "respectable" and earn as many critical kudos as he does hardcover and paperback sales. Finishing off his latest opus in a remote cabin in the Colorado Rockies, his drive home is interrupted by a harsh snowstorm. He loses control of his car, rolls down an embankment, and is saved from a miserable, frozen death by Annie Wilkes (Kathy Bates), who brings him back to her home, tends to his grievous wounds (his legs left hopelessly shattered) and declares herself to be his "Number-One Fan". She's devoured all of his previous Misery novels, and can't wait to tear into his latest book...but comes to him in the middle of the night, incensed beyond belief that Paul had the unmitigated gall to actually kill off her literary heroine. Soon, Annie - who, as Paul comes quickly to realize, is not only "eccentric" but dangerously crazy - comes to him, armed with reams of paper and a clunky, old-school typewriter, and demands that he take back the grave injustice he visited upon her and resurrect Misery in a brand-new novel, dedicated to her. Paul is forced to acquiesce, quietly terrified at Annie's frequent bouts of manic-depressive rage, and a symbiotic clash between creator and audience comes to pass over the course of a lonely, isolated winter...

Director Rob Reiner (adapting his second Stephen King story, following the nostalgic coming-of-age fable Stand by Me) and screenwriter William Goldman shape King's twisted exploration of the creative process into a taut, claustrophobic thriller that percolates with cabin-fever suspense. The acting is exemplary...Bates copped a well-deserved Best Actress Oscar for her flamboyant performance, one that is, at turns, frightening, pitiable and darkly funny ("He didn't get out of the c0ck-a-doodie CAR!!!"), but Caan makes for an ideal antagonist, internalizing Paul Sheldon's incredulity at his absurd incarceration and growing disquiet as it becomes obvious that Annie is a more than a few cards short of a full deck. Reiner, aided by the excellent cinematography of Barry Sonnenfeld, directs the material with looming, wide-angle closeups that turn the planes of Bates' fleshy features into a monument of glazed impassivity that can break apart, with shocking suddenness, into spasms of childish rage and even more startling bouts of manic happiness. The two actors play off each other with maximum fidelity, and the tension builds with carefully-constructed skill (including a sequence that stands as one of the top-three most effective acts of screen violence in any adaptation of King's work), until a climax that, while expertly staged, nevertheless feels like a slight letdown, the product of an era in which even intelligent, adult thrillers reverted into slasher-movie formula (Fatal Attraction is similarly flawed). Still, Misery works both as a superior shocker and as an amusing (and, sadly prophetic) precursor to a current age when rabid fanboys of any cinematic franchise under the sun have become so possessive of the things they profess to "love" they end up destroying the very objects of their overly-ardent affections.

[Monterey Jack]

It's close to mid-niiiiiiight....

[AndyDursin]

Happy Octobering to one and all.

Got Army of Darkness and Amityville 4Ks in today for review. Had to buy Fright Night because they don't have enough review copies. Dang it

[BobaMike]

Is there a new Army of Darkness bluray? I just watched the old Screwhead edition, and the picture was ok.

I had forgotten it was rated R! Not sure why, as it was so goofy, and only a few swear words. Compared to Super 8, which I watched with my kid for the first time and it was foul language city!