Halloween Horror Marathon 2023

[Monterey Jack]

-Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber Of Fleet Street (2007): 10/10



Gushingly gory adaptation of Stephen Sondheim's stage musical about Benjamin Barker (Johnny Depp), a "naive" barber torn away from his loving wife Lucy (Laura Michelle Kelly) and infant daughter Joanna and incarcerated on a false charge due the machinations of the sinister Judge Turpin (Alan Rickman, at his snide, doleful best). Fifteen years later Barker emerges from prison as the newly re-christened "Sweeney Todd", who travels back to Fleet Street in London aching for a little vengeance. Soon, with the assistance of dotty and besotted baker Mrs. Lovett (Helena Bonham Carter), Todd has set up a successful barbering business, keeping his busy silver razors dripping with the grue of his customers as Mrs. Lovett processes their mortal remains into savory meat pies and Todd waits -- with increasing impatience -- to get Turpin into his barber's chair and take more than a little off the top.

Director Tim Burton is the ideal person to realize Sondheim's dark and mordantly funny vision on the big screen, and his trademark, gorgeously gloomy visuals (Dante Ferretti took home a Best Production Design Oscar) are finally given their full due on a great new 4K UHD disc release (shamefully bundled into an expensive boxed set of completely unrelated Paramount horror movies). Depp and Carter acclimate themselves adroitly to the demands of Sondheim's breathless, tongue-twisting verses (they're not beautiful singers, but they don't embarrass themselves to Mama Mia levels, either), and Burton fills the movie with firehose arterial sprays that will certainly turn squeamish viewers as green as Mrs. Lovett's crusty pies but will delight the Fangoria crowd. Bloody beautiful.

[Monterey Jack]

Mama Mia! (here we go again...)

-Rosemary's Baby (1968): 10/10

-Full Circle (1977): 7/10





With her gamine features, doe eyes and haunted fragility, Mia Farrow is an ideal horror-movie heroine, and it's a shame she only has a handful of films within the genre. Director Roman Polanski's Rosemary's Baby needs little introduction, the tale of Rosemary Woodhouse (Farrow), and her husband Guy (John Cassavetes), who move into a highly desirable New York apartment in a posh old building and work at starting a new life and family. But after a frightening nightmare where she believes she's being raped by a red-eyed demon, Rosemary becomes pregnant, and instead of glowing with expectant-mother radiance, she begins to become gaunt, withdrawn, and paranoid about their motives of her husband the building's fellow tenants (including a batty Ruth Gordon, who copped a Best Supporting Actress Oscar). Is the forthcoming bundle of joy going to be a blessing...or a curse?

Polanski's film remains one of the great psychological pressure-cooker thrillers of all time, showing the audience almost nothing while keeping the gradually increasing tension percolating nicely. Farrow is the key to it all working, selling Rosemary's gradual descent into anxiety-laden mistrust, culminating in one of the great, terrified reaction shots to something wisely left to the audience's imagination, where it's likely to be far more disturbing being projected on our inner movie screens. Set to Krzysztof Komeda's eerie lullaby of a score, Rosemary's Baby remains a classic after 55 years.

Full Circle stars Farrow as Julia Lofting, who, in a startling prologue, witnesses her eight year old daughter Lily start to choke on an apple slice, driving her to a fruitless, makeshift act of tracheotomy. Left despondent at her inability to save her daughter's life, she has a nervous breakdown, and when she emerges from the hospital, breaks off with her unfeeling husband Magnus (2001's Keir Dullea) and moves into a expansive new home in order to heal her wounded mind. But she starts seeing images of a young, blonde girl who achingly reminds her of Lily, and attending a seance with her friend Mark Berkeley (Tom Conti) she learns of the murder of a young boy back in the late 1930s, and how it connects to the former owner of her new home. Is her daughter reaching out from the beyond in order to help bring justice to a terrible crime from the past?

Adapted by screenwriters Harry Bromley Davenport and Dave Humphries from the excellent supernatural novel Julia by Peter Straub and directed by Richard Loncraine, Full Circle (better known by the title The Haunting Of Julia from its 1981 release on this side of the pond) is a film that brims with atmosphere and supported by another fine, emphatic performance by Farrow. Colin Towns' memorable electronic score sets the creepy tone perfectly, and there are a number of eerie sequences, and Loncraine it with a gliding, unobtrusive hand. Yet it can't match up to Straub's source material, lopping off a few too many important plot threads and leaving other ideas a bit too nebulous. Hey, I have nothing against a scary movie being ambiguous, but Full Circle has moments that don't entirely make sense with certain details from the book omitted or treated too vaguely. It's still a fine movie with ample, misty ambiance to induce pleasurable seasonal shivers, but it could have been more.

[Paul MacLean]

Polanski's film remains one of the great psychological pressure-cooker thrillers of all time, showing the audience almost nothing while keeping the gradually increasing tension percolating nicely. Farrow is the key to it all working, selling Rosemary's gradual descent into anxiety-laden mistrust, culminating in one of the great, terrified reaction shots to something wisely left to the audience's imagination, where it's likely to be far more disturbing being projected on our inner movie screens.

I can't argue with that. I always loved Rosemary's Baby when younger, for a myriad of reasons, not least that it managed to depict a truly frightening story while being virtually devoid of gore.

That said, I watched it again a couple of years ago -- and while it remains a paragon of storytelling, acting, suspense, and has a number of iconic moments (the phone booth scene is brilliant) -- I came to realize that the ending ruins it. Not only do "the bad guys" win at the end, the protagonist essentially joins with them. I realize Ira Levin was (at the core of his book) attempting to depict the immutable power of maternity (before choosing the supernatural angle Levin briefly pondered the idea of Rosemary being impregnated by space aliens!). But nevertheless I find the ending distasteful, and a lead balloon (much as I do the ending of Brazil. I actually wound-up getting rid of my disc.

[AndyDursin]

I have to confess: of the myriad of "60s/70s horror classics" I have always been low on ROSEMARY'S BABY. I agree with Paul I don't care for the ending. But I also found the lead-up, probably because of the amount of imitators and such over the years since the film was made, to be really drawn out and transparently plotted with a minimum of surprises. And I'm also not a Mia Farrow fan really either.

But to each his own. It's just not a film I even own, I'm not a big admirer of it.

[Monterey Jack]

-Pet Sematary (1989): 5/10



Dr. Louis Creed (Dale Midkiff), and his family consisting of wife Rachel (Denise Crosby) daughter Ellie (Blaze Berdahl) son Gage (wee Miko Hughes, later cast as Heather Langenkamp's son in Wes Craven's New Nightmare) and cat Winston Churchill (aka "Church") arrive at their new home in the small Maine town of Ludlow in order to begin a new life. All seems to be ideal...a beautiful location, a friendly old neighbor, Jud Crandall (Fred Gwynne), and a new practice for Louis. But on his first day at the office, Louis is faced with the gruesome death of a young man, Victor Pascow (Brad Greenquist) brought in after a horrible road accident. Before expiring, Victor warns Louis not to "cross the barrier", the meaning of which soon becomes evident when kitty Church is run down in the road by a truck. Jud takes Louis to the "Pet Sematary" near his home where he -- and generations of children -- have interred their beloved pets. And then beyond, to an ancient Indian burial ground (yes, it's that kind of movie), where Louis is instructed to bury Church's mortal remains. The next day, Louis is astounded to see Church walking into his garage, seeming none the worse for wear...except for the stench of moldering graveyard dirt around him. Jud relates that the Micmac burial ground has been used from time to time to resurrect dead animals for those unable to let go, leading Louis to ask the question that would come to anyone's mind when told such a crazy yet enticing story..."Has anyone ever buried a person up there?" Soon, a grave personal tragedy finds Louis having to put that question to the ultimate test.

Feeble adaptation of one of Stephen King's most chilling and disturbing novels gets the incidents of King's mournful text on celluloid effectively enough, but music video director Mary Lambert has little interest in plumbing the story's deep wellspring of grief and rage against a God who would allow such horrible things to happen, instead treating the material as typical late-80s Fangoria schlock, ladelling on the goopy gore effects and a tone that's all wrong. The movie was originally going to helmed by George A. Romero, and it's one of the great missed opportunities when it comes to King adaptations that this didn't come to pass. The acting does not help...Midkiff performs in a perpetually narcoleptic fog, never selling Louis as the kind of man so blinded by misery that he'd descend to the acts he perpetrates, and Crosby doesn't add much of interest either (the overly jovial Greenquist, meanwhile, seems to be acting in another, far more arch movie entirely). The sole, shining exception is Gwynne, who's absolutely marvellous as the crusty Jud Crandall. With his rheumy, haunted old-man's eyes and thick Maine drawl (pronouncing "road" as "rud") that's somehow not schticky, he alone manages to suggest a real person amidst the film's weary collection of stock performances, and it's a shame he's yoked to the rest of the film. If I were to create a list of the top ten performances in King adaptations that come closest to replicating the characters on the page, Gwynne would definitely earn a slot (and, considering that one of my favorite actors, John Lithgow, played the role in the superior 2019 remake and still comes in second, that's saying a lot). Add to that an Elliot Goldenthal score with a main theme that's distractingly similar to Lalo Schifrin's The Amityville Horror (ironic, as Goldenthal would successfully sue Warner Bros. for the bald-faced plagiarism of his Titus score in their 2007 movie 300), and Pet Sematary is a movie that should have had ended with the horrific emotional kick of Frank Darabont's adaptation of King's The Mist, but instead is content to send the audience out with a catchy rock song by the Ramones! Paramount's UHD release at least looks great, but it's putting lipstick on a pig, ayuh.

[Monterey Jack]

-Phantom Of The Mall: Eric's Revenge (1989): 4/10



Late-period 80s slasher about a teenager, Eric Matthews (Derek Rydall) who survives the burning of his home (his parents were not so lucky) in order to clear land for the construction of a forthcoming mall. As it reaches the day of its grand opening (presided over by mayor Morgan Fairchild), Eric, his burned face concealed by half of the faceplate of a department store mannequin, starts conspiring to bring the whole rotten temple of commerce down, as well as reconnect with his old girlfriend Melody (Kari Whitman), who witnessed his "death" and is now whisked away into Eric's subterranean lair as he broods and conspires against the greedy developers who ruined his face and his life.

Middling entry in the slasher cycle is mainly watchable for its 80s Mall Porn ambiance (shot at the Sherman Oaks Galleria, previously immortalized in teen classics like Fast Times At Ridgemont High and Valley Girl) full of nostalgic background nuggets (Sam Goody! Kay*Bee Toy & Hobby...!), and spotting horror legend Ken Foree as a security guard and -- yes! -- Pauly Shore as an obnoxious frogurt store clerk who plops edible fake ears into his dishes. Otherwise it lacks tension or memorable gore effects, just going through the motions in a passable yet mediocre fashion.

[Monterey Jack]

-The Blob (1988): 8.5/10



A bioplastic entity from outer space hitches a ride on a meteorite and crash-lands in the sleepy burg of Arborville, California, where it first gloms onto the hand of an old bum who unwisely pokes it with a stick and eventually dissolves him into a puddle of pink goo. And for each new victim the "Blob" dissolves and ingests into itself, its mass continues to grow...and grow...and GROW. Soon a government response team (led by Joe Seneca) arrives to contain the threat to the local populace, as a popular cheerleader (Shawnee Smith) and local greaser bad boy (Kevin Dillon) are amongst the townsfolk struggling to survive the gooey menace from beyond the stars.

Excellent remake of the 1958 B-movie favorite (which is actually rather pokey and sort of lame, best-known for giving a young "Steven" McQueen his first leading role and for Burt Bacharach's swingin' title song) does that wasn't possible with the primitive tech of the 1950s...gives its titular ooze real presence and direction. It slips and slides around door cracks, through ventilation shafts and pipes (a highlight has a diner fry cook getting pulled graphically headfirst down the kitchen sink after attempting to "plunge" the Blob), sprouting tentacles that whip out to ensnare fresh, screaming victims. Director Chuck Russell (who co-wrote with future Stephen King favorite Frank Darabont) orchestrates the various attack and assimilation sequences with gross, shivery skill, crafting a number of memorable setpieces (like diner owner Candy Clark trapped inside of a phone booth that the Blob engulfs and the Blob's invasion of a local movie theater showing the amusing slasher movie sendup Garden Tool Massacre). The special effects (created in part by Lyle Conway, who brought "Audrey II" to life in Little Shop Of Horrors are consistently awesome, utilizing every technique of the pre-digital era to give its goopy, shapeless monster real bite. The movie is also well-cast, with Smith making for a strong, appealing heroine and Dillon making for a rakishly bemulleted hero as they scramble and improvise to save themselves and the community. Scary, taut, funny and all-around fun, The Blob '88 remains one of the best horror remakes done, and the new 4K UHD release from Scream Factory (supplanting an already-excellent Blu-Ray release from four years back) presents it in all of its gory glory.

[Paul MacLean]

^^
Strong agreement on The (1988) Blob, which is by far the best of the three incarnations (the less said of Beware The Blob the better!). I liked how the filmmakers made the monster a government experiment gone wrong, as opposed to an unexplained “weird thing from outer space”. I also appreciated the way Joe Seneca was cast against type — here in the role of the villain (instead of the “avuncular old guy” roles he was usually associated with).

[Monterey Jack]

The only disappointment of The Blob is Dov Hoenig's chintzy electronic score, which does the movie no favors. The filmmakers obviously blew most of the budget on the creature F/X, and there was little left over to hire the services of an orchestra. Shame someone like Jerry Goldsmith didn't do this, instead of wasting his time on genre junk like Leviathan and Warlock around the same period (although there's a funny -- and shameless -- moment where Shawnee Smith is talking with her mother in her bedroom, and Hoenig totally copies "Kay's Theme" from Capricorn One!).

[AndyDursin]

It's not a score I'd listen to but I actually thought as all synth scores went from the time it wasn't bad. He at least seemed to compose it as if it was "orchestrated" and it didn't bother me at all.

They didn't have the budget for anything else. I guess I only realized the other night this was an independent production that was set up at New World then jumped around. Tri-Star picked it up for distribution but they didn't fund it or have anything else to do with it AFAIK.

It's why it was released in ULTRA STEREO and not Dolby because they were trying to save some pennies.

[Paul MacLean]

The only disappointment of The Blob is Dov Hoenig's chintzy electronic score, which does the movie no favors. The filmmakers obviously blew most of the budget on the creature F/X, and there was little left over to hire the services of an orchestra

Michael Hoenig actually. (Dov Hoenig is an editor.)

Michael Hoenig was a huge champion of the Synclavier II -- a state-of-the art keyboard introduced in the 1980s, which at the time had unparalleled sampling abilities. That and the Yamaha DX7 where the two most-used keyboards at the time, and their sounds were ubiquitous in 80s pop music and film scoring.

However, the Synclavier was aslo a buggy instrument -- Alan Silvestri's once broke-down during a session, which cost a fair amount of time and money as they struggled to get it working (while the orchestra sat there getting paid for doing nothing!). The Yamaha DX7 on the other hand may have been less fancy, but it was much-more reliable, user-friendly (and cheaper!).

Synclavier went out of business in 1993.

[AndyDursin]

Yeah I was about to say, Michael Hoenig did the score. Again, I wouldn't say I was a huge fan, but I still found it a LOT less offensive than many synth scores from the 80s.

The gold standard of bad for me in that genre is Joe Renzetti's POLTERGEIST III. The noodling around the 3 minute mark here was an instant "oh this movie is going to suck so bad" when I heard it for the first time back in 8th grade.



The original trailer used someone else's tracked music before bringing in a bit of Jerry at the end, which would've elevated even THAT piece of junk -- if only a wee bit.

[Monterey Jack]

-May (2003): 9/10



Exceptional character study about May Dove Kennedy (Angela Bettis), a young woman afflicted since childhood with a lazy eye that has alienated her from her peers ("Are you a pirate?" asks one little boy). To help her cope, her mother gifts her with a doll she made as a child...one that May may never remove from inside her glass case. Growing into young womanhood, May is a quirky, withdrawn soul (working as a veterinary assistant), desperate for real human contact yet too fragile to make the important step into a larger world. But when she lays eyes on a dreamboat garage mechanic, Adam Stubbs (Jeremy Sisto), with a jones for Dario Argento movies and simply the most beautiful pair of hands, May is enchanted, and conspires to make him her fella, even as her flirty lesbian co-worker (Anna Faris, in a good dramatic turn) makes May question which way she entirely swings. But when May comes on far too strong to Adam on their first official date, his cold rejection of her causes a lifetime of resentment, sorrow and rage to bubble to the surface, as May realizes she may not be able to get the ideal boyfriend...but, perhaps, she can make one.

Writer/director Lucky McKee crafts a horror film full of supple, lived-in details, and Bettis is marvelous. With her gawky, sweet smiles and achingly introverted manner, it's a performance worthy of Sissy Spacek in Carrie (and, indeed, Bettis played the role of Carrie White in a forgotten 2002 television adaptation of Stephen King's novel). While the film does ultimately descend into the gory bloodbath you'd expect, it's the relatable human details -- the need for connection in a cruel world -- that really linger, culminating in a final sequence that's equally shocking and heartbreaking. A true gem. Look for an early credit for Rian Johnson listed as a co-editor.

[Monterey Jack]

Getting off without a Hitch....

-Watcher (2022): 8/10

-What Lies Beneath (2000): 8/10





The shadow of the Master of Suspense falls heavily upon today's pair of suspense potboilers. Watcher stars Maika Monroe (It Follows) as Julia, an American actress who relocates to Bucharest with her husband, Francis (Karl Glusman), and finds herself adrift in a country where she knows little of the local language and customs as Francis works long nights at the office. But soon Julia notices the man in the apartment complex across the way, always sitting in the window, seemingly watching her, every night. She's also spooked by a mysterious man (Burn Gorman) who has the impropriety to sit in the seat directly behind her at a revival screening of Stanley Donen's Charade (who does that, I mean, honestly...?!) and follow her into a local supermarket. Is is all in Julia's head, a paranoid byproduct of being a stranger in a strange land, or are these occurrences linked to a series of recent serial murders?

Writer/director Chloe Okuno takes a pretty basic thriller idea and crafts it with skillful elegance, her burnished images aglow with sinister intent, and Monroe (who resembles a less-daffy Brittany Murphy) makes for a compelling heroine, one who is not afraid to stalk her own supposed stalker in order to get some answers. It's the kind of suspenseful, tight, unpretentious thriller we used to get by the boatload from major studios thirty years ago, but now these are the kind of films that vanish into the streaming ether, needing to be found out by determined scary-movie addicts. Watcher is imminently watchable.

That sadly bygone era of sleek, star-driven dramatic thrillers for adults is typified by What Lies Beneath, which stars Harrison Ford and Michelle Pfeiffer as Norman and Claire Spencer, an attractive, well-to-do middle-aged couple who have just bundled their daughter off to college, leaving a melancholy Claire with a bad case of empty nest syndrome, puttering around their lakeside abode in Vermont. It's no wonder that the new neighbors Warren and Mary Feur (James remar and Miranda Otto) have captured her attention, with their frequent loud arguments followed by enthusiastic bouts of loud makeup sex. But when Mary seems to vanish -- after Claire witnesses Warren bundling a mysterious wrapped package into the trunk of his car in the middle of the night -- she starts to wonder if foul play may not be involved. Is this linked to the ghostly visions that have been teasing her, like half-glimpsed faces in the lake and a bathtub that keeps refilling by itself?

Directed by Robert Zemeckis from a screenplay by Sarah Kernochan and actor Clark Gregg (Agent Coulson...!) that mixes elements from numerous Hitchcock pictures together in an agreeable stew, What Lies Beneath is a superior example of what real starpower used to mean, with Ford and Pfeiffer making for an ideal pairing. Ford's mixture of concern for his wife's growing anxieties and surly exasperation at same is perfectly matched to Pfeiffer's fragile loveliness as she susses out a mystery from the past and how it connects to the suspicions and supernatural occurrences that are plaguing her. Zemeckis, as always, brings his trademark technical gloss to the proceedings, and the film generates plenty of hovering suspense and a few real shockeroo setpieces (one, involving a bathtub, is especially shivery). It's not quite a great film, but we'd all kill to see something classy like this being given a major theatrical release in this day and age.

[Monterey Jack]

-Night Of The Hunted (2023): 7/10



Camille Rowe stars as a young woman, Alice, who's coming home from a pharmaceutical conference when she stops off at a remote gas station in the middle of the night, only to get pinned down by a mysterious sniper, who clips her in the arm and taunts her relentlessly (over a CB radio) about what the oh-so-2023 motives for his actions are (Antifa! #MeToo! Wokesters! Mask mandates...!), as Alice bleeds and screams and improvises a way out of the box she's been put into.

Director Franck Khalfoun handles the mayhem skillfully enough -- the bloody film definitely generates palpable, claustrophobic tension -- but the endless socio-political rantings the mysterious sniper delivers over the radio quickly grow tiresome, and are going to date the movie horribly. A movie like The Strangers only required the disquietingly simple motivation "Because you were home" to justify the actions of that film's trio of killers. It's a shame, because otherwise it's a nasty, rock-solid piece of thriller logistics, so you wish the filmmakers had simply left their dyspeptic ax-grinding to themselves and just allowed the movie to work on its own merits.