Halloween Horror Marathon 2020

[Monterey Jack]

You’re the star of the story! Choose from 2 possible endings…!

-Halloween (1978): 9.5/10

-Halloween II (1981): 7/10

-Halloween (2018): 7/10







Has any horror film of the past fifty years been as picked-over, analyzed and copied as often as Halloween? Co-writer/director John Carpenter’s big breakout, it was the film that set the rules of the 80’s “slasher movie” genre in stone, and while an endless array of sequels and rip-offs have slightly dulled the edge of “Boogeyman” Michael Myers’ butcher knife murder weapon of choice, Carpenter’s skill with generating and releasing tension – and the screamy conviction that debuting star Jamie Lee Curtis brings to the role of meek, virginal babysitter Laurie Strode, stalked by a masked maniac on Halloween night, 1978 – keeps this a seasonal perennial that is still finding new audiences to this day. It’s as basic a fright machine template as that campfire classic that ends with the line, “…and there, hanging on the door handle, was this razor-sharp hook!”, and the very simplicity of its construction is what makes it one of the greats. Later slasher knockoffs would crassly up the gore and nastiness quotient for ever-more-jaded teen audiences (Halloween, in retrospect, could almost be aired uncut on network TV these days, albeit omitting some brief topless shots), but Carpenter’s film is as classy as it is chilling, a model of low-budget efficiency and craft.

It became the highest-grossing independent film of its day, and one of the most profitable movies ever on a cost-to-return ratio until unseated by The Blair Witch Project over two decades later, so naturally everyone tried to cash in, first with a series of gross-out ripoffs (with Friday The 13th leading the charge), and then with a 1981 sequel, given a larger budget and marching orders to up the amount of blood and grue (“Carnage candy!”, to quote Scream 2). Curtis’ “Final Girl” Laurie is brought to Haddonfield Memorial Hospital to be treated for the wounds received on Halloween night, and finds herself stalked yet again by the relentless Myers, whose doctor, Sam Loomis (Donald Pleasance) soon learns Michael has a previously-hidden connection to Laurie.

Director Rick Rosenthal had his initial cut rejected as “not scary enough” by Universal, who requested that exec producer/co-writer/co-composer John Carpenter step in to shoot additional inserts of bloody wounds and other varied nastiness. The resulting film is a perfectly serviceable facsimile of the original movie’s thrills, with returning cinematographer Dean Cundey doing an expert job evoking the look and feel of the original (although Curtis’ awful wig doesn’t help), yet it never generates as much tension or empathy, especially with Curtis stuck in a thankless position of being zonked out on pain meds and out of action for long stretches of the film (no wonder she called her “Scream Queen” career quits after this film). There are some genuine jolts along the way, and Pleasance’s hysterical rantings as the increasingly agitated Loomis are always fun (“I shot him SIX TIIIIIIIIIIIIMES! I shot him in the HEART! He’s NOT HUMAN…!!!”), but it’s merely good, not great.

After the second film, the series would go through as series of ever-convoluted sequels, which were retconned out of existence by the “real” sequel, Halloween: H20, in 1998, which only followed the continuity of the first and second films and ignored the rest. Amazingly, even that film has now been conscripted to the dustbin of history by the 2018 Halloween, which ignores the continuity of all the previous movies but the first (confused, yet?). Picking up forty years after that fateful night in late October of ’78, it features a traumatized, paranoid Laurie living in seclusion and estranged from her daughter (Judy Greer) and granddaughter (Andi Matichak). But when Michael escapes from the mental hospital and comes cruising for another round of All Hallows Eve slashings, Laurie has to gear up, a la Linda Hamilton in Terminator 2, to face her fears head-on and protect her family.

The resulting film is as mechanically enjoyable – and disposable – as Halloween II, with director David Gordon Green crafting some solid suspense (set to a terrific remix of familiar themes by John Carpenter, Daniel Davies and son Cody Carpenter), and yet…it’s the same damn beverage, just poured into a fancy new glass. Yeah, it’s better than the majority of post-H-2 sequels, well-acted and stylishly crafted (with an especially well-done climax inside of Laurie’s heavily-fortified home), yet it ends with no sense of actual resolution, just another open door for more sequels (the latest of which would be playing in theaters right now were it not for the Covid pandemic). People clinging to the original Halloween are like fortysomething guys still pining away for the high school sweetie who popped their horror-fan cherry and trying desperately to retain that initial frisson of fear they experienced likely as kids a little too young at the time. It’s time to let this GO, already.

[Monterey Jack]

Oh, God! You Devil…

-The Exorcist (1973): 10/10

-Needful Things (1993): 7/10





When Swedish actor Max Von Sydow passed away earlier this year, we lost one of the great performers of all time. Whether in the most cerebral of art-house fare or the junkiest of multiplex popcorn flicks, Sydow always lent a touch of elegance and class to the proceedings. A pair of horror films, released two decades apart, illustrate his range. The Exorcist needs no introduction to even the most casual of horror fans…a genre-defining smash in its era, it still retains the ability to raise goosflesh in even the hardiest and most jaded of viewers closing in on its fiftieth anniversary. The harrowing tale of a young girl named Regan (Linda Blair, in a brave performance) who finds herself possessed by a foul, demonic spirit (“The sow is mine!” is one of the only phrases spat by the invading presence – given the guttural, corroded croak of Mercedes McCambridge – that one can repeat in polite company), causing her distraught actress mother, Chris Macneil (Ellen Burstyn), to seek out the advice of a young priest, Damien Karras (Jason Miller), who’s already suffering from a crisis of Faith. Shaken to the core witnessing the horrible physical and spiritual degradation of young Regan’s body and mind, Father Karras asks the church for the go-ahead on an exorcism, an ancient rite used to push unclean spirits out of the host bodies of possessed victims, with the assistance of the elderly Father Lancaster Merrin (Sydow). Together, the two must fight for Regan’s immortal soul.

Director William Friedkin (adapting William Peter Blatty’s popular bestseller), crafts the ultimate in sacrilegious shockers, a film that -- despite countless movies about demonic possession and exorcism cleansing that have come and gone over the last 47 years – still has the power to upset and alarm. The foul-mouthed curses that emit from Regan’s scar-faced, grinning demon visage still sting, and the makeup work by the legendary Dick Smith are still remarkable, not only in their depiction of Regan’s terrifyingly corrupted visage but also in transforming Sydow – in her early forties at the time of filming – into the elegantly creased old man the actor would age into over the course of forty years. It’s one of the most convincing old-age makeup jobs ever done. With a score consisting of blisteringly atonal classical pieces (including Mike Oldfield’s minimalistic “Tubular Bells”, a tune that must have been in the back of John Carpenter’s mind when he penned his classic theme to Halloween five years later) and ominous, Oscar-winning sound design, The Exorcist is a film that resonated even with those who decry horror films, or religious movies…no matter one’s beliefs, it’s a movie that’s hard to get out of one’s head once they’ve seen it.

On the other side of the spooky spectrum there’s 1993’s Needful Things, a cheerfully vulgar adaptation of Stephen King’s bestseller set in his fictional town of Castle Rock, Maine (small-town Maine setting? In a Stephen King story? Well, I never!), where a new curiosity shop – christened “Needful Things”, of course – has just opened. The proprietor, the elegant silver fox Leland Gaunt (Sydow), is selling a little bit of everything, from vintage baseball cards to 1950’s varsity jackets to various objects d’art, all for prices that are more than reasonable…provided they also come with the purchasers playing a little prank upon one of the other selected townsfolk. Such little, trifling things, really, but these mean-spirited “pranks” build upon each other in a daisy-chain of events that escalate until the town’s inhabitants are literally at each other’s throats, with Mr. Gaunt drinking in the sour misery with fiendish pleasure.

Like a lot of King’s fiction, Needful Things is filled with a vivid cross-section of character archetypes, all personified in the film by a terrific cast (Ed Harris as the Sheriff who views Gaunt with terse suspicion from the first, Bonnie Bedelia as his prematurely-arthritic finance, excellent 90’s character actor J.T. Walsh as a town selectman drowning in gambling debts, and the always-eccentric Amanda Plummer as the fragile town nutcase), and while the film excises a lot of the details to adhere to a two-hour theatrical runtime (there’s a longer, three-hour cut that shows up on television at times, as well as a European Blu-Ray release), enough is retained to allow the film’s sense of small-town rot and avarice to develop with clockwork skill. Director Fraser C. Heston (son of Charlton Heston) clearly has fun with the film’s black-comic details, setting the proceedings to a playfully sinister score by Patrick Doyle that’s supplemented with cleverly-chosen classical pieces (like the beautiful “Ave Maria” accompanying two women brutally hacking each other to pieces). And Sydow is marvelous as Gaunt, delivering each line with a mischievous twinkle that makes even the most obvious clunkers seem Shakespearean (he replies to the invocation “Jesus Christ…’ with “The young carpenter from Nazareth? I knew him well. Promising young man…he died, badly”). This is hardly a film to be taken on any sort of serious level, even on King’s perennially adolescent wavelength, but it’s certainly fun to watch, held together by the skill of the cast and especially Sydow’s delightfully Devilish presence.

[Monterey Jack]

“Are we not men…?”

-Island Of Lost Souls (1932): 9/10

-The Island Of Dr. Moreau (1977): 7/10





H.G. Wells’ 1896 novel The Island Of Dr. Moreau remains one of the great depictions of Man’s hubris in perverting nature to fit his own scientific curiosity, and a number of films have been adapted from this seminal work of speculative fiction. 1932’s Island Of Lost Souls remains the best, a pre-Code chiller about Edward Parker (Richard Arlen), a sailor left adrift at sea in a lifeboat after his shipping vessel sinks. He’s rudely dropped off at the nearest port of call by the drunken, boorish captain, a flyspeck isle lorded over by Dr. Moreau (Charles Laughton), a prototypical Mad Scientist who is obsessed with turning animals into men who think and reason, twisting and splicing their DNA, with the failed human/animal hybrid experiments living in the jungle under his cruel supervision (Bela Lugosi is marvelous as the “Sayer Of The Law”, dolefully intoning Moreau’s Commandments that separate these twisted, woeful beings from their base animal natures). Parker is outraged at Moreau’s tampering with the natural order, especially when he meets the alluring yet innocent Lora (Kathleen Burke), the young girl who is Moreau’s closest attempt at turning Beast into Woman.

Directed by Erle C. Kenton, Island Of Lost Souls is a film that drips with atmosphere and dread, and Laughton is simply splendid as the supercilious Moreau. With his prissy little smile and disdainful delivery, he makes for a memorably hateful antagonist, and the film’s still-shocking climax, when his riled-up creations finally turn on him, brings the proceedings to a rouser of a finale. This can stand with some of the best horror cinema of the 1930’s.

Two other big-screen adaptations would follow, including a hilariously insane 1996 version starring a bloated, even-more-eccentric-than-usual Marlon Brando as Moreau (which is more noteworthy for the insanity of the behind-the-scenes production than what actually ended up on-screen). In-between, there was the 1977 AIP production The Island Of Dr. Moreau, featuring Michael York as the shipwrecked castaway, Andrew Braddock, who washes up on the shores of the titular island, lorded over by Moreau (Burt Lancaster), who has a perpetually drunken mercenary (Nigel Davenport) on-call to quell the dissatisfaction of his twisted scientific experiments, and a beautiful young woman, Maria (stunning Barbara Carrera) in his care. But his ill-tempered brood of “humanimals” (including Gypsy favorite Richard Basehart as The Sayer Of The Law) are chafing at Moreau’s cruel treatment in “The House Of Pain”, leading to a violent insurrection.

Directed by Don Taylor (Damien: Omen II), the ’77 Moreau is well-shot in vivid Virgin Island locales and features a lush, exciting score by Laurence Rosenthal, as well as fantastic makeup effects supervised in part by John Chambers and Tom R. Burman. That said, it cannot compare to the crisp, economical chills of the 1932 film. Lancaster makes for a fine Moreau – all glittering, feverish eyes and clenched teeth – but York makes for a somewhat flavorless protagonist, with his growing affections for Maria not given enough time to flourish (the excision of a bitter denouement – included on certain TV edits of the film, a still from which is featured on the Kino Blu-Ray – would have helped). It’s certainly far better than the disastrous 1996 version (which at least had some unintentional hilarity to assuage the tedium), but could have been so much more.

[Monterey Jack]

-Burnt Offerings (1976): 8/10



Effective chiller about a couple, Marian and Ben Rolf (Karen Black, Oliver Reed), their young son Davey (Lee H. Montgomery) and elderly Aunt Elizabeth (the great Bette Davis), who take over the care of a decrepit-on-the-outside but luxe-on-the-inside mansion at the behest of the Allardyce siblings (Burgess Meredith, Eileen Heckart). The rent for the summer is a steal, and all they have to do is look after the abode’s upkeep and look after the needs of their employers’ unseen mother, who never ventures outside of her locked upstairs bedroom. At first things go swimmingly, but soon Marian starts developing an odd fixation on the house, and Ben finds himself taunted by horrible nightmares about the funeral of his mother when he was a child (mostly revolving around the leering grin of a sinister chauffer).

Written and directed by Dark Shadows creator Dan Curtis (adapting a novel by Robert Marasco), Burnt Offerings is a film of slow, moldering dread, not big shocks, and thus will work better for patient viewers, but those who stick with it will be rewarded with a creepy, slow-burn psychological drama that builds inexorably to a memorably surreal punchline.

-Ghost Story (1981): 7.5/10



A quartet of elderly gents (the distinguished collection of Fred Astaire, Melvyn Douglas, John Houseman and Douglas Fairbanks, Jr.), who dub themselves “The Chowder Society”, get together once a month to tell each other frightening fables. But it’s not these Scary Stories To Tell In The Dark that are keeping them up nights in a cold sweat…it’s a terrible, shared secret from their pasts, and when one of their sons (Craig Wasson) shows up with a whopper of his own to tell, involving his brief, passionate relationship a beautiful young woman named Alma Mobley (a stunning, frequently unclothed Alice Krige), that secret threatens to reach out from the distant past and make their present into a horrific real-life nightmare.

Adapting a novel by Peter Straub, director John Irvin has crafted a classy chiller filled with fine performances…and yet, having read Straub’s novel for the first time a few months back, the narrative lapses in the film have become more apparent. Taken on its one merits, it’s very good, with twinges of genuine unease, and yet it’s a skeleton outline of Straub’s sprawling tale, which would take a miniseries to do fill justice (Mike Flanagan could do a kick-ass seven or eight-hour version of this for Netflix). That said, if it’s a skeleton, it’s an attractively-draped one (and not just for Krige’s abundant nudity, either). The photography by vet Jack Cardiff, makeup “illusions” by Dick Smith and especially Phillipe Sarde’s superb musical score give this a wonderful surface gloss, helping to disguise plot ideas that come out of nowhere (like Krige’s pair of sinister helpers, who enter the film abruptly and are barely explained). It’s a worthwhile film that delivers some genuine frights, even if it’s anorexic compared to the excellent source material.


-Alien (1979): 10/10



A film that needs no introduction or lengthy preamble, Ridley Scott’s eerie outer space haunted house film remains one of the best mixtures of sci-fi and horror ever conceived, with superb Oscar-winning special effects in service of the notion that one should never, ever pick up a hitchhiker, whether it’s alongside some remote, rainswept road or during a long-haul interplanetary mining excursion. A young Sigourney Weaver has her signature, star-making role here as Lt. Ripley, one of a seven-person space crew who investigate a mysterious radio transmission on a return route to Earth and find themselves besieged by a terrifying, biomechanical beastie designed by H.R. Giger that remains one of the most frightening movie monsters ever conceived (especially its insidiously icky reproductive cycle, which results in one of the most shocking scenes in all of horror cinema). With Jerry Goldsmith’s prickly, atonal score setting the mood, Alien remains a vital experience despite 40+ years’ worth of mostly-inferior sequels and prequels (only James Cameron’s immediate follow-up, Aliens, can truly match it, both films forming the “meat” of the franchise, with the rest as condiments one can take or leave based on their personal taste). The UHD release makes it sparkle anew is a gorgeous 4K restoration.

-Asylum (1972): 6/10



Okay Amicus anthology feature has the courtesy to save the best two segments for the end. It’s a typical grab-bag of pseudo-EC Comics “gotcha” shockers, held together with the wraparound concept of a new doctor (Robert Powell) arriving at a rural mental hospital, and being put to the “game” of determining which of the four patients he is to be introduced to is actually the former head of the asylum, driven mad by the stresses of his job. If he can, he will have proven himself “worthy” of the position. His interviews with said patients form the bulk of the narrative in lengthy flashbacks, the best of which features the easy-on-the-eyes pair of Charlotte Rampling and Britt Ekland as sisters in a tale about a young woman (Rampling) trying to adjust to life on the outside after spending time at a previous asylum. That segment and the concluding one have the best “punchlines” of the lot, and while the first two are kind of mediocre, by keeping the best for last, the film ends on a strong enough note to make it a mild recommendation for 70’s horror enthusiasts.

[Monterey Jack]

-Ghost Ship (2002): 3/10



A scrappy salvage crew (including Gabriel Byrne, Julianna Margulies and Karl Urban) locates a deserted Italian ocean liner which vanished without a trace in 1962 floating in international waters, meaning they’ll get a big payday if they can find a way to haul it back into port…but the rusted-out innards of the vessel contain many restless spirits, who are aching to add the salvage crew to their roster. Tepid WB Ghost House production from the early 2000s (yes, there is a heavy metal song blaring over the end credits) has a memorable grabber of an opening sequence (which depicts – in graphic detail – why the ship went missing decades earlier), but not much else, with poor acting, mediocre special effects and a dearth of scares. Go watch the good X-Files episode “Dod Kalm” from season 2 and you’ll get a better Mary Celeste story in half the running time.

“I’ve never done PARTS before…”

-Re-Animator (1985): 8.5/10

-Bride Of Re-Animator (1991): 7/10





As far as 80’s gross-out horror/comedies go, Re-Animator ranks up there with Evil Dead 2 as one of the finest. Jeffrey Combs became a beloved cult icon on the level of Bruce Campbell and Crispin Glover as Dr. Herbert West, dedicated medical student who moves to Arkham, Massachusetts, to continue his research into the rejuvenation of dead tissue, in order to prolong life past its “sell-by” date. His roommate and fellow student, Dan Cain (Bruce Abbott), is horrified when West resurrects the cat of his girlfriend, Megan (80’s Scream Queen babe Barbara Crampton), but agrees to go along with West’s increasingly-unhinged experiments, culminating in a memorable sequence that brings new meaning to the phrase “giving head”.

The late horror veteran director Stuart Gordon pretty much hit the peak of his career with this film, a jolly mixture of stomach-churning gore and eccentric comedic flourishes, boasting top-notch makeup effects and dedicated performances from the leads, with Combs in particular crafting his signature role as the maniacal West.

There have been several sequels I haven’t touched until now, but since it was available on Prime at the moment, I decided to chase Re-Animator with its 1991 sequel. Bride Of Re-Animator finds Drs. West and Cain – eight months after the hospital massacre that concluded the original film – continuing to delve into the mysteries of life and death, with Cain mourning the loss of his beloved Megan while forging a new relationship with the comely Francesca (Fabiana Udenio, who would later play “Allota Fagina” in the original Austin Powers) as West continues to refine grafting various body parts together like ill-fitting Tetris blocks. The original film’s producer, Brian Yuzna, takes the directorial duties here, and it’s a reasonable continuation of the first movie’s gruesome thrills and yuks. That said, despite some inspired makeup effects and ghoulish comic touches, it doesn’t match up to the original, with some obvious cost-cutting measures in place (like Richard Band’s Psycho-plagiarizing score being played on cheap, tinny synthesizers, instead of the full orchestra he had to play with on the original). If you liked the original, this will certainly scratch the same itch, but it lacks the inspired highs of the first film.

[AndyDursin]

SLEEPY HOLLOW (1999)
8.5/10

Johnny Depp before he became weird, Christina Ricci before she emasculated herself, Danny Elfman before he became boring, Tim Burton before he got stuck in a rut...this one is pretty much a cross section of talents at or near their peak. It's just as entertaining as I recall. In dire need of a 4K remaster but a solid studio product all the way through.

[Monterey Jack]

In dire need of a 4K remaster but a solid studio product all the way through.

Yep...the ancient Blu-Ray is an atrocity. It's a shame the movie's 20th anniversary came and went, and the only thing we got for it was the same crummy disc in cheap "digibook" packaging. Scream Factory should get on this now that they have an in with Paramount.

[AndyDursin]

I have a release I imported from Japan probably about a decade ago (maybe more), and it's much better than the US release but could certainly be improved.

It would certainly be perfect for the Paramount Presents line of Blu-Ray remasters. I mean they just gave us THE HAUNTING and SLEEPY HOLLOW was a bigger hit that I can't imagine doesn't sell better between Depp and Burton.

A real 4K UHD would be nice to see, especially since it's distributed by a myriad of different labels overseas. Someone should get around to it!!

[Monterey Jack]

It would certainly be perfect for the Paramount Presents line of Blu-Ray remasters. I mean they just gave us THE HAUNTING and SLEEPY HOLLOW was a bigger hit that I can't imagine doesn't sell better between Depp and Burton.

It's constantly amazing what Scream Factory deems worthy of a loaded SE, and what doesn't. Garbage like Urban Legends, Valentine and Ghost Ship get loaded, luxe editions (I think the Urban Legends disc has a TWO-AND-A-HALF-HOUR making of. For a third-rate Scream ripoff ), while films from brand-name auteurs with major stars like Burton and Depp's Sleepy Hollow and Robert Zemeckis' What Lies Beneath (with Harrison Ford and Michelle Pfeiffer, grossing $300 million on a budget a third that, half of it in the U.S. alone) are either stuck on a fifteen-year-old crap-o-rama disc, or not even released to Blu at all! Yet some hack-job slasher movie from 1981 will get a lavish special edition release.

[AndyDursin]

I doubt SLEEPY HOLLOW or WHAT LIES BENEATH are available to Scream Factory. It's a question of what a studio is willing to license out to labels like Shout -- you see it with Disney licensing less attractive Hollywood Pictures and some Touchstone movies to Mill Creek and Kino Lorber, but unwilling to let go of their bigger hits. That's resulted in comedy hits like THREE MEN AND A BABY and WHAT ABOUT BOB going unreleased on Blu-Ray (because Disney wanted them, but now they don't care about physical media) while THE GUN IN BETTY LOU'S HANDBAG has long been available lol. I'm sure Kino or Mill Creek would've released STAKEOUT if they could have -- but all they could touch was ANOTHER STAKEOUT instead.

Typically, it's a lot easier to license the crap the studio doesn't want than the higher profile hits in their catalog that still generate revenue.

I don't believe Paramount would want to give up SLEEPY HOLLOW. That's one of their higher grossing movies from that year/era -- it's not APRIL FOOL'S DAY, PROPHECY or any number of FRIDAY THE 13TH slashers (which, sure, they eventually licensed to Scream, but not until Paramount had released them already in the format, in any number of configurations). Burton, Depp -- they're very likely not letting go of that.

WHAT LIES BENEATH was a big commercial hit also, even bigger than SLEEPY HOLLOW. Much like THE HAUNTING, it's much more likely Paramount retains it for themselves and releases it as part of their remastered "Presents" line than licenses it out for someone else to make money off it. Especially that one too, since like THE HAUNTING, it's never been released in this format at all here!

[Monterey Jack]

-Trick ‘r Treat (2009): 9/10



It’s All Hallows Eve, and despite there being four inches of premature snow on the ground, there’s still time to get in some Tricks while enjoying some seasonal Treats. 2009’s Trick ‘r Treat is probably the ultimate horror anthology, with a series of ghoulishly witty terror tales set in a small Ohio town on Halloween night (including a twisted take on Little Red Riding Hood, a childish prank turned horribly wrong, a homicidal school administrator and a nasty l’il bag-headed imp named Sam tormenting a curmudgeonly old man haunted by a secret from the past) that overlap each other a la Pulp Fiction. Writer/director Michael Dougherty (Krampus) is someone who obviously loves the atmosphere of Halloween, and he fills the frame with all of the seasonal trimmings (grimacing Jack-O-Lanterns, wet, leaf-strewn streets, sodden sacks of candy being drug along sidewalks by up-too-late tots) while fashioning a mixture of gory frights and comic delights that finds the right tone throughout, with each segment finding just the right visual “punchline” to bring them to a fiendish finish. An absolute classic for those who treasure this time of year as I do, and the perfect one to watch on the day itself. Have fun, stay safe….and always check your candy.

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



What’s to be said? A masterpiece of stop-motion storytelling, a musical with not one bad song, and the perfect hand-off between waning autumn frights and the Holiday delights to come. The tale of Jack Skellington (spoken by Chris Sarandon, with composer/songwriter Danny Elfman providing his beautiful singing pipes) the King of Halloweentown, who grows weary of the same-old same-old and yearns for something new, latching himself onto the exciting new discovery of Christmastown, abducting “Sandy Claws” (Ed Ivory), and acting as his surrogate, dropping ghoulishly ill-advised “presents” down every chimney.

Director Henry Selick (James & The Giant Peach, Coraline) takes producer Tim Burton’s story concepts and characters and fashions a gorgeously gloomy fairy tale, with just the right ratio of spooky-to-celebratory that will make kids shiver pleasurably while adults will marvel at the technical acumen that it required to bring Jack and the other fabulously gnarled denizens of Halloweentown (including the alluring rag doll Sally – voiced by Catherine O’Hara – who adores Jack from afar and can stitch her detachable limbs back as required) to fluid life. It’s an enchanting work of artistry on every conceivable level, and I cannot imagine a Halloween-time marathon without it. It’s the perfect capper for another year’s worth of scares, and, as always, it’s painful to say goodbye, yet…there’s always next year. Farewell, adieu, and have a frightful holiday…!

[AndyDursin]

Nice job as always MJ, Happy Halloween to all!

[Monterey Jack]

Nice job as always MJ, Happy Halloween to all!

Thanks. Made it to an even 90 movies this year, a new record!

[Johnmgm]

Great job!!

[Paul MacLean]

Dr. Terror's House of Horrors (7/10)

Was looking for something I'd never seen, and as I am a sucker for just about anything British from the 1960s, this seemed a good choice.

It proved a letdown though. The film is an anthology in which five passengers in a train compartment hear their futures are foretold by a mysterious sixth passenger. The stories themselves have potential, but are not well-executed, which makes for a generally unsatisfactory movie. The cast is outstanding however -- British horror vets Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee are joined by Roy Castle and Donald Sutherland (plus Bernard Lee and Jeremy Kemp in supporting roles).

But Dr. Terror's House of Horrors is quite inferior to later anthologies (from the same filmmakers) -- it lacks the "creep factor" of Tales From the Crypt, and is not nearly as entertaining as The House That Dripped Blood. I was however struck by the story in which Lee plays an art critic who runs over a painter -- severing the artists hand, which comes back to have its revenge on Lee. This idea was totally ripped-off by Oliver Stone in his script for The Hand.

Elisabeth Lutyen's score is poor, and never once does anything to create a creepy atmosphere -- indeed there are many potentially scary moments which are crying out for music, but are left un-scored. The film however is well-photographed by Alan Hume (who shot a lot of Avengers episodes, and went on to photograph Return of the Jedi).