Re: Halloween Horror Marathon 2021
Posted: Mon Oct 18, 2021 1:39 pm
Crazy '88s...
-Night Of The Demons (1988): 7/10
-The Blob (1988): 8.5/10
A pair of gross-out concoctions from the autumn days of the 80s today. Night Of The Demons is as basic as a horror film gets, a gaggle of stock teens (the Virginal Prom Queen, the Slut, the Jerk, the Slob, the Goth Girl, etc.) converge on a crumbling, abandoned funeral parlor on Halloween night, hoping to party 'til dawn, when they unleash unholy spirits that possesses them, one by one, and turned them into a pack of gibbering, blood-drooling ghouls who turn on the handful of the un-possessed as they scramble for an escape from the walled-in grounds.
Boasting top-notch makeup and gore effects supervised by Steve Johnson, Night Of The Demons offers up many disgusting delights along the way for seasoned horror fans, and yet it never attains the kind of freight-train momentum of something like Sam Raimi's Evil Dead or its sequels. While technically well-made in all respects, it lacks the kind of jackhammer camera ferocity that would have taken this basic premise and (re)animated it with more storytelling elan. Plus, it takes too long to get to the damn funeral parlor and get things rolling, with a moderately tedious setup in the first half hour (even if one element of said setup paid off with a great, gruesome sick joke that punctuates the film in its closing moments). Still, Night Of The Demons is definitely worthwhile for fright fans.
The same year's The Blob (a remake of a 1958 picture best known for being the leading-man debut of "Steven" McQueen) is even more fun, a cheerfully disgusting updating of 1950s sci-fi tropes as a meteor crashes to Earth near a small California town, discharging an ooky, pink mass of shapeless protoplasm from within its core. It attaches itself to the hand of a local bum, and starts to grow..and grow...and GROW...eventually swallowing up dozens of terrified citizens and the military scientists (led by Joe Seneca) tasked with containing the "bioplasmic mass", with the only ones willing or capable of doing anything including a popular cheerleader (Shawnee Smith) and a local bad boy with a heart of gold (a be-mulleted Kevin Dillon), who have to team up to discover a way to repel the advance of the carnivorous Jello-mold from beyond the stars.
Directed by Chuck Russell (just coming off the third -- and best -- of the Nightmare On Elm St. series, The Dream Warriors) and co-scripted by him and Frank Darabont (The Shawshank Redemption, The Mist), The Blob is tight, scary and well-performed by all, and the revolting creature F/X (supervised in part by Lyle Conway, creator of "Audrey II" from Little Shop Of Horrors) stand as some of the best of its pre-digital era. Unlike its 1958 predecessor, where the Blob oozed listlessly across postcards of the small-town backdrops, this Blob has true movement, direction and purpose, shooting out tendrils to ensnare new victims and pull them in to be messily dissolved within its central mass. It's all impressively yucky, and builds to a exciting climax with the Blob talking on an ice truck driven by Dillon's greaser hero that boasts tip-top effects work. The only demerit is the cheap, tinny synth score by Michael Hoenig, where it's obvious the filmmakers had little money left to throw at a music budget after spending so lavishly on their title creature. Still, the rest of the film is just dandy, capping off a previous decades' worth of elaborate, unusually good remakes of 50's B-pictures (Invasion Of The Body Snatchers, The Thing, The Fly).
-Night Of The Demons (1988): 7/10
-The Blob (1988): 8.5/10
A pair of gross-out concoctions from the autumn days of the 80s today. Night Of The Demons is as basic as a horror film gets, a gaggle of stock teens (the Virginal Prom Queen, the Slut, the Jerk, the Slob, the Goth Girl, etc.) converge on a crumbling, abandoned funeral parlor on Halloween night, hoping to party 'til dawn, when they unleash unholy spirits that possesses them, one by one, and turned them into a pack of gibbering, blood-drooling ghouls who turn on the handful of the un-possessed as they scramble for an escape from the walled-in grounds.
Boasting top-notch makeup and gore effects supervised by Steve Johnson, Night Of The Demons offers up many disgusting delights along the way for seasoned horror fans, and yet it never attains the kind of freight-train momentum of something like Sam Raimi's Evil Dead or its sequels. While technically well-made in all respects, it lacks the kind of jackhammer camera ferocity that would have taken this basic premise and (re)animated it with more storytelling elan. Plus, it takes too long to get to the damn funeral parlor and get things rolling, with a moderately tedious setup in the first half hour (even if one element of said setup paid off with a great, gruesome sick joke that punctuates the film in its closing moments). Still, Night Of The Demons is definitely worthwhile for fright fans.
The same year's The Blob (a remake of a 1958 picture best known for being the leading-man debut of "Steven" McQueen) is even more fun, a cheerfully disgusting updating of 1950s sci-fi tropes as a meteor crashes to Earth near a small California town, discharging an ooky, pink mass of shapeless protoplasm from within its core. It attaches itself to the hand of a local bum, and starts to grow..and grow...and GROW...eventually swallowing up dozens of terrified citizens and the military scientists (led by Joe Seneca) tasked with containing the "bioplasmic mass", with the only ones willing or capable of doing anything including a popular cheerleader (Shawnee Smith) and a local bad boy with a heart of gold (a be-mulleted Kevin Dillon), who have to team up to discover a way to repel the advance of the carnivorous Jello-mold from beyond the stars.
Directed by Chuck Russell (just coming off the third -- and best -- of the Nightmare On Elm St. series, The Dream Warriors) and co-scripted by him and Frank Darabont (The Shawshank Redemption, The Mist), The Blob is tight, scary and well-performed by all, and the revolting creature F/X (supervised in part by Lyle Conway, creator of "Audrey II" from Little Shop Of Horrors) stand as some of the best of its pre-digital era. Unlike its 1958 predecessor, where the Blob oozed listlessly across postcards of the small-town backdrops, this Blob has true movement, direction and purpose, shooting out tendrils to ensnare new victims and pull them in to be messily dissolved within its central mass. It's all impressively yucky, and builds to a exciting climax with the Blob talking on an ice truck driven by Dillon's greaser hero that boasts tip-top effects work. The only demerit is the cheap, tinny synth score by Michael Hoenig, where it's obvious the filmmakers had little money left to throw at a music budget after spending so lavishly on their title creature. Still, the rest of the film is just dandy, capping off a previous decades' worth of elaborate, unusually good remakes of 50's B-pictures (Invasion Of The Body Snatchers, The Thing, The Fly).