31 Days of Horror 2020 edition

[BW Haggar Senior Member Find all posts View Profile Close BW Haggar]

Good double bill, BW. I saw Night of the Living Dead at the theater when it played the bottom of a double bill with Slaves (1969). Vengeance of the Zombies is certainly the better co-feature.

Thank you George.

It must have been quite an experience to see 'Night..' theatrically when it was first out and about.

I'd not heard of 'Slaves' before; looking it up, it sounds... interesting, but the prevalence of negative reviews is not encouraging.

[BW Haggar Senior Member Find all posts View Profile Close BW Haggar]

Saturday night was Werewolf Night.

The Wolfman (1941) - nuff said.

Night of the Werewolf / El Retorno del Hombre Lobo (1980)

I know I've seen this one at least once before, but apparently I never gave it's due as one of Paul Naschy's all-time best, and a pretty triumphant capstone to his gothic horror career. (Yeah, I know that 'Panic Beats', 'Beast with the Magic Sword' etc followed, but I believe this was his last straight up, old school gothic?)

I mean, who else could write a story about three hot lady 'scientists', one of whom is secretly an evil Satanist, travelling to untouched-for-centuries ruins in depths of the Carpathian mountains to search for (and/or revive) the remains of the vampiric Countess Bathory, only to meet (and/or fall in love with) the legendary lycanthrope Waldemar Daninsky along the way.... and then film it all with complete conviction and sincerity?

There's clearly a bit of nostalgia going on here, with various scenes re-creating Naschy's 'greatest hits' from earlier in his career, and - for some reason - a far lower level of nudity and gore than most of his other horror films, but neither of these issues really distracted from my enjoyment on this occasion. Production values seem much higher than usual, and, as with 'Inquisition' a few years earlier, Naschy proves he could direct with more confidence and dramatic urgency than any of the guys he hired to point the camera for him on his earlier movies.

Taken on its own terms, this is a wonderful pulp horror romp without a hint of irony or self-awareness, which succeeded in making me feel as if I were 12 years old, watching a Hammer movie on late night TV for the first time. Loved it!


And for Sunday's slightly-horror-ish-classic-film theatre, we watched...

Les Diaboliques (1955)

First time re-visiting this since I saw it as a teenager, and I can't help but feel it's one of those films whose power has been diminished over the years by the extent of its own influence.

By which I mean, anyone who has seen a handful of gialli or Sangster/Hammer thrillers or Hitchcock pastiches will be able to suss exactly what is going on here pretty quickly, and will be expecting at least one more table-turning twist of the knife..... which never arrives, because audiences in 1955 had never been here before and just didn't need that shit.

Nonetheless, in purely technical terms, this remains an absolute master class, more than justifying its classic status. Beautiful visuals (somehow managing to seem incredibly expressionistic without ever departing from realism), pitch-perfect performances and ruthless, methodical pacing - about as perfect an exemplar of the "everything meticulously pre-planned" school of filmmaking as you're ever likely to see.

And on the weblog meanwhile: a review of The Amazing Transparent Man (1960), which isn't really horror in terms of its plotting, but I'd argue that Edgar Ulmer's doom-laden direction just about nudges it over the line.

[Newt Cox Senior Member Find all posts View Profile Close Newt Cox]

TITLE-Zombieland
SOURCE-Netflix Streaming Service

I know I know I should have reviewed this years ago. Honestly I had forgotten about this movie until the sequel came out last year.

Jesse Eisenberg is trying to survive a zombie outbreak. Through out the film he is giving us his rules for surviving in Zombieland. Most of which are pretty good. I also like how they worked Amber Heard into the film.


Not that far into the film Jesse meets Woody Harrelson. Woody is a bad ass. Has a truck full of weapons. And is on the search for a Hostess Twinkie. And at first Woody seems to be a one note character. But thankfully thru out the film Woody's backstory gets fleshed out. And by the end of the film you feel for the guy and all he has been thru.


During a trip into a grocery store,with Jesse looking for supplies and Woody on the hunt for Twinkies,they run into two sisters. Played by Emma Stone and Abigail Breslin. These two trick Woody and Jesse. They steal the guys' car. But not long after this all four of them team up.

They have all heard that there is a amusement park on the west coast that is free from zombies. So they start heading out west. Once they are out west they end up running into Bill Murray,who is playing Bill Murray. Seems he has hidden out in his huge home. And will go out for supplies while he is done up as a zombie.

Sadly Bill dies. And our gang of misfits makes it to the amusement park. The girls go off to ride a ride and Woody is on his hunt for Twinkies. Then the zombie invade.

This movie is a great blend of drama/horror/comedy. For every scene that makes you laugh there is one that makes you feel for the various characters. The FX work is pretty damn good. And I am still surprised it took 10 years for a sequel to this movie to be made. I know that a few years back Amazon Prime Video did a pilot for a Zombieland tv show. But they got none of the original cast back. And the pilot bombed.


Zombieland gets a A-.

And for today Cody covered Revenge of Frankenstein

[Gary Banks Senior Member Find all posts View Profile Close Gary Banks]

Cemetery Of Terror- This South of the Border movie borrows or is influenced by several different USA horror flicks, Children Shouldn't Play With Dead Things, NOTLD, Halloween and maybe even Evil Dead. Brain dead med students steal the corpse of a Satanist killer before he can be cremated. Using an ancient book they found, they not only bring the killer back to life, but other ghouls from a nearby cemetery as well. Hugo Stiglitz, our favorite walking block of wood, drives around what may be Brownsville TX looking like he has to find a place to shit really bad. This is somewhat fun and a step up IMO from Grave Robbers. Full frame scratchy as hell print from BCI. Sadly, no children were harmed making this film.

October 2020

1-The Raven (35) 6
2-The Cosmic Monsters 4
3-Grave Robbers (88) 4
4-Cemetery Of Terror 5

[BW Haggar Senior Member Find all posts View Profile Close BW Haggar]

Dr Blood's Coffin (1961)

I'd intended to watch Karloff in 'Corridors of Blood' this evening, but.... turns out I don't actually own a copy of it, so this was the next best thing! Kind of a middling off-brand British horror, directed by Sidney J. Furie, all about the son of a GP performing Frankensteinian resurrection experiments in an abandoned tin mine near a picturesque Cornish village.

Scripting is decidedly ropey throughout, and long stretches are pretty uneventful, but the whole thing is handsomely realised, with splendid - very early '60s style - colour photography and a propulsive, Hammer style orchestral score. Not many familiar faces in the cast, but Hazel Court is the leading lady.

There are a few bits of 'Curse of Frankenstein' inspired surgical grue, and things get a bit icky at the end when the mad scientist (who is actually named Dr. Blood) digs up Hazel's dead husband, who's been mouldering in the grave for over a year, and sticks a new heart in what's left of him. Yuck!

Enjoyable enough in an undemanding kind of way (perfect for a Monday night), but what I appreciated most about it was actually the Cornish locations, which look absolutely beautiful, and the period detail on view in the village exteriors, which provides a lovely time capsule. It gave me a real twinge of sadness, reminding me that I've not been able to make it out to the coast or the countryside at all this year.

[Killer Meteor Senior Member Find all posts View Profile Close Killer Meteor]

Thank you George.

It must have been quite an experience to see 'Night..' theatrically when it was first out and about.

I'd not heard of 'Slaves' before; looking it up, it sounds... interesting, but the prevalence of negative reviews is not encouraging.

Night was originally shown in the US as part of a children's matinee double bill with DR WHO AND THE DALEKS!

[Dom D Spoon! Find all posts View Profile Close Dom D]

Night was originally shown in the US as part of a children's matinee double bill with DR WHO AND THE DALEKS!

Really? I would have though NOTLD would have been very strictly adults only back in the day.

[agent999 Senior Member Find all posts View Profile Close agent999]

Really? I would have though NOTLD would have been very strictly adults only back in the day.

They got a lot of flack for that. Some sources cite it as one of the reasons that the modern ratings system was introduced.

[BW Haggar Senior Member Find all posts View Profile Close BW Haggar]

Yeah, my wife & I were talking about this after watching NOTLD at the weekend. The general view seems to be that the film was a real game-changer in the U.S. re: introducing the idea that horror films could be intended for an adult audience, as opposed to the kiddie matinee kind of deal which had prevailed since the monster movie days of the '40s & '50s.

Who was the well-known critic who wrote a bad review of the film, not based on its quality, but just on the basis that he saw it in a screening full of crying, terrified children..? (My brain tells me it was Maltin, but I'm not sure he was even in business at this point, so perhaps not.)

[Headless Body Senior Member Find all posts View Profile Close Headless Body]

Who was the well-known critic who wrote a bad review of the film, not based on its quality, but just on the basis that he saw it in a screening full of crying, terrified children..? (My brain tells me it was Maltin, but I'm not sure he was even in business at this point, so perhaps not.)

It was Roger Ebert: https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/t...ving-dead-1968

[BW Haggar Senior Member Find all posts View Profile Close BW Haggar]

Oh yeah, that's right. I always get those two confused. :)

Thanks for the link - pretty interesting and well-balanced piece of writing, although his repeated reference to Duane Jones as "the Negro" certainly haven't aged well.

[Darcy Parker Senior Member Find all posts View Profile Close Darcy Parker]

Oh yeah, that's right. I always get those two confused. :)

Thanks for the link - pretty interesting and well-balanced piece of writing, although his repeated reference to Duane Jones as "the Negro" certainly haven't aged well.

Gee, it's almost like a 50-year old article discussing people whose preferred nomenclature has changed every decade or less might not be using the current terminology. How could that be?

[Matt H. Senior Member Find all posts View Profile Close Matt H.]

Yeah, my wife & I were talking about this after watching NOTLD at the weekend. The general view seems to be that the film was a real game-changer in the U.S. re: introducing the idea that horror films could be intended for an adult audience, as opposed to the kiddie matinee kind of deal which had prevailed since the monster movie days of the '40s & '50s.

Who was the well-known critic who wrote a bad review of the film, not based on its quality, but just on the basis that he saw it in a screening full of crying, terrified children..? (My brain tells me it was Maltin, but I'm not sure he was even in business at this point, so perhaps not.)

It's great to think that roughly half of the kids in that audience most likely hate horror movies to this day, while for the other half this was their gateway movie into a life of loving horror movies.

[Newt Cox Senior Member Find all posts View Profile Close Newt Cox]

Day 6

TITLE-Resident Evil
SOURCE-DVD

Wow hard to believe this film came out almost 20 years ago. I can remember hearing that a Resident Evil movie was gonna happen and that George Romero,RIP Sir,was going to direct it. So myself and every horror fan I knew was super excited.

Then we hear that nope Romero isn't going to direct it. Instead Paul W.S. Anderson is the director. And he cast his wife Milla Jovovich as the lead.

Under Raccon City the Umbrella corp is doing some nasty stuff. After someone steals some of the T-virus. This causes the computer that is in control of the old mansion this is happening under to shut down the mansion.

Milla plays Alice. She wakes up in the mansion. And quickly meets up with a commando team that has been sent in to take care of the issue.

So instead of say a good moody zombie horror film,we got a action film with zombies. Back when I first saw this I enjoyed it but kept thinking "Man I hope the sequels are closer to the games." I had no clue back then that each film in this franchise would get more and more away from the games.

The FX work is pretty damn good. The scene where the security lasers cut a bunch of the commandos into pieces is well done. Too bad the acting is all pretty much shit.


Milla is a gorgeous woman. But her acting talent isn't that great. Really the best actor/actress in this film is Michelle Rodriguez. But Michelle is just playing the tough woman role she seems to be stuck playing for the past 30 years now.

There is currently 5 films in this series. I saw the second and third film. And they were so bad I just gave up on this franchise.

Back when this came out it was considered the best movie based on a video game.Back then it's competition was shit like Super Mario Brothers,Street Fighter and those two horrible Mortal Kombat films. I have been trying to think if there is a movie based on a video game that is better than Resident Evil,and I can't think of any that are live action. But the Double Dragon movie comes close to being better than this film.



Resident Evil gets a C+.

Day 7TITLE-Verotika
SOURCE-Blu Ray/DVD/CD Soundtrack editon from Cleopatra Entertainment

Every year I try to buy and try out a film I heard a buzz about the previous year from various festival screenings. A few years ago I got lucky and picked out WolfCop and loved it. And that Blu Ray happened to be fairly cheap. This year I took a chance on Glenn Danzig's first movie that he directed and wrote Verotika.

Back in the 90s comic boom Danzig started up a horror/erotica comic company,that still somewhat exists still. The longest running and best selling title was Verotik,which was a erotic horror anthology series. With some damn good talent like Grant Morrison,Simon Bisley and even splatter punk author Edward Lee did some writing for Danzig's fairly decent horror comic.

Too bad none of that great talent worked on this movie. I had heard it was pretty bad. But thought nah,,, it can't be as bad as I am hearing. It wasn't as bad,it was worse.

This is a three story film. Hosted by a fairly attractive brunette,I know the Verotik title had a host but can't remember what her name was. First story is about a model who has permanent duck lips. We see her at her apartment on the couch with some guy who looks like he was a roadie for the Damn Yankees.

In the foreground of the shot is a flower. On this flower is crawling a albino spider.This spider is CGI. It looks like something you would have seen on the Jaguar CD. I have seen much better CGI work in Made for SYFY originals by the Asylum.

Back to Ducklips on the couch. Her and the guy and fucking and he keeps on trying to take her top off. She does all she can to stop him,it starts getting really creepy as she tells him to stop while continuing to grind on top of his crotch. He over powers her takes off her tops and.... she has eyeballs where her nipples are suppose to be!

Dude runs out of there and we finally get the plot of this short. Whenever Ducklips goes to sleep the albino spider morphs into a white tall 3 armed spider/man creature. Who likes to strangle strippers and models.

The rest of the short is Ducklips trying to not fall asleep and the Albino Spider/man killing what I assume are French porn stars making a quick buck off Danzig.

The cops kill the albino spider and this ends. Well at least it wasn't too long.

The second story has a stripper,who wears a lower face mask while stripping. Her face is revealed to be horrible fucked up. And she goes around killing strippers and hookers.Then skinning their faces.

Wow after that first story I wasn't expecting the second one to be amazing or nothing. What I got was a boring trope filled "horror" story set at a strip club. Tits and bad 80s hard rock looking for a plot.

A Elizabeth Bathroy inspired short is the film story. This time Danzig managed to cast some gorgeous ladies for all the parts. The acting is the best of the film,outside of the host's parts before and after stories. And it seems like most of the budget was saved for this final part.

Lots of blood of course. Some decent camera angles and it is almost enough to make up for that horribel second story.

No clue what this set costs now when I pre ordered it I paid like 25 bucks. Thinking,OK it will be so bad it is good and can give someone the dvd.Plus the soundtrack is going to be amazing!. The soundtrack sucks and after two listens got put back into the blu ray/dvd case and won't be listened to much again. I don't hate anyone enough to give them the dvd of this.

Like Rob Zombie,Glenn Danzig appears to be a director who proudly displays the films/eras he is inspired by. Verotika feels like lots of 70s eurohorror. The look of the film is early 90s porn. Back before they kinda figured out how to light videotape. Some of the angles in Verotika reminded me of 1989's Dr Caligari. Which of course was made by a guy best known for directing porn.

Oddly for all the crap I gave the movie I got this nagging feeling that it is gonna become a cult hit.Once it hits a streaming service like Amazon Prime,Netflix or Shudder word of mouth will get so many people to watch this.

Verotika gets a D+


And for CodyLL

Day 6 is Hammer's The Mummy

Day 7 is Brides of Dracula

[Gary Banks Senior Member Find all posts View Profile Close Gary Banks]

Tomorrow night I'll be watching the Bears play the Bucs. Does that qualify as a horror show? Tonight's viewing:

Shivers (blu ray)-I first saw this at the local Drive In in either late 76 or early 77 under the title They Came From Within. In a luxury apartment complex on an island off of Montreal, a demented scientist creates a parasite that turns its host into sexual predators. The little beasties look like a cross between a penis and a turd and wreak havoc infecting tenants through any orifice available. Cronenberg has a knack for foreshadowing future real life events with his movies. You could see this movie as a metaphor for the upcoming AIDS crisis in the 80's. In Videodrome he takes television taking over people's lives and being a father to the internet age, where we all have "screen names". The more I see Shivers, the less I like Paul Hampton in the role of Dr St Luc, who is the nominal hero. Granted, he's not as bland as Stephen Lack in Scanners, but he's close. Still this is one of Cronenberg's top 5.

October 2020

1-The Raven (35) 6
2-The Cosmic Monsters 4
3-Grave Robbers (88) 4
4-Cemetery Of Terror 5
5-Shivers 7.5