31 Days of Horror 2022 edition can't think of a catchy subtitle

[Spaghetti Monkey]

#2
Howling IV: The Original Nightmare
(John Hough, 1988)

a total bust.

D-

It so is.

[Newt Cox]

Got in the Amusement Park Blu,saturday,so watched that for the 4th time. Got on Sundays movie. Which is the best of the glut of modern low budget horror clogging up store shelves. Well the best out of the 30 or so I have seen over the past few years.

Rewatched Night of the Demons,modern remake,earlierr just cause a buddy was an extra and he keeps saying he is on screen apile and I never see him for more than a second.

[Darcy Parker]

Got my first two watched today, courtesy of Shudder!

Cemetery of Terror - Well, I can now honestly say Nightmare City is not the worst Hugo Stieglitz zombie movie I have seen.

Grave Robbers - More Mexican mediocrity, with an ending that just kinda stops.

[BW Haggar]

#1
Evil Dead Trap
(Toshiharu Ikeda, 1988)

My first time watching this.

The first half is an extremely effective, visceral horror movie with a minimal / knowingly dumb set-up soon giving way to relentless 'Evil Dead'-style mayhem. It has a scuzzy and unsettling atmosphere, as the tone veers uneasily between a fun, Friday night horror flick (nods to Argento, Fulci and Raimi, and a delightfully lo-fi Goblin-derived score) and hints at something more extreme and unpleasant just around the corner (eg, sweaty and extended scenes of torture and sexual assault). This helps create a genuine "anything could happen next" kind of vibe, which, combined with wildy imaginative visuals and solid supense filmmaking, proves pretty exhilarating.

Unfortunately, the second half, during which the pacing slackens off, the threat diminishes and the random, insane manifestations of evil are streamlined into a semi-conventional plotline, proves far less engaging and drags on for considerably longer than it really needs to.

Nonetheless, a unique effort, well worth a watch.

B+


#2
Howling IV: The Original Nightmare
(John Hough, 1988)

John Hough's run of horror films from the early '70s through to the early '80s was remarkably consistent, with just about everything he turned his hand to in the genre landing somewhere between "absolute classic" and "pretty decent / interesting". So, on that basis, I thought I'd give this much maligned Howling sequel a go, just in the hope that it might actually be better than critical consensus would tend to suggest.

You can imagine my consternation when the ominous credit "produced by Harry Alan Towers" popped up, but, atrocities against god and man though the assorted horror films Towers produced during the late '80s may be, they're rarely boring, so I was still happy to proceed.

More fool me it turns out, because long story short, this is fucking terrible.

The acting by a cast of complete unknowns (to me, at least) is totally flat, the dialogue is clunky and witless (but not sufficiently so to be funny), the story is a half-arsed, entirely predictable assemblage of cliches, nothing remotely exciting happens through 90% of the run-time, there are basically no werewolves... even the title is shit.

On the plus side, there is one pretty great, extremely gloopy werewolf transformation during the last five minutes.

Aside from that though - a total bust.

John, Harry... what happened?

D-

[JonesyTheCat]

01 - THE TORTURE CHAMBER OF DR. SADISM - 8/10
Criminally overlooked gem from West Germany that owes a ton to Bava and Corman's Poe cycle, with strong elements of house of traps films and a dungeon crawler tabletop game.
This was my first serious sit down and watch of this film. The transfer on Amazon Prime is really good, making the lush colors and amazing sets really pop.

[Gary Banks]

I should state that ratings are from ACK! (which honks on bobo) to ****.Bold is 1st time viewing or 1st in ten years.
001-Castle Of Blood ****
002-In Search Of Dracula **

[BW Haggar]

After a tough year, I am so in for dedicating my newly reclaimed spare time to watching horror movies through October - will hope to post some notes on 'em all here if at all possible.

Blatant plug: I've already kicked things off on my newly resurrected blog with a review of oddball French horror-porn flick 'Draguse', and am aiming to publish something new every couple of days in the lead up to Halloween. Content initially won't cross over much with whatever I post here, so please do have a look if you're thus inclined: https://breakfastintheruins.blogspot.com/

[Newt Cox]

Day 01

TITLE-We Summon the Darkness



SOURCE-Netflix

So back in 2019 this horror film came out. I heard nothing about it till last year. Was late one night and I wanted something new to watch. Read the synopsis and thought this sounded decent. It is the late 80s and 3 teen girls have went to a metal band concert. Turns out someone has been killing people in a Satanic way.

At the concert the girls meet three 80s era Metalheads with a van. Spend most of the concert with the guys. Then when it is over they invite the guys to come back to their place.

Of course they want us the audience to assume these guys are gonna be evil and do something horrible to the young women. But nope. The girls spike the guys drinks. Then over the course of the film try to kill them.

One of the girl's dad's is a TV preacher. And a group the girls belong to has been doing these Satanic killings to boost the donations coming into the church. And that TV Preacher father is played by Johnny Knoxville. Who isn't in the film that much but stands out when he is on screen.

The only other member of the cast I knew was Alexandra Daddido. Seen her in TCM 3d and a few other movies. She really isn't given much to work with here sadly.

The FX work is decent. The script and acting is ok. But nothing about the movie makes it rise above the flood of horror you will find on Netflix.

We Summon the Darkness gets a C+.

And like the past few years buddy CodyLL is doing a theme,foreign horror

http://codysfilmandtvblog.blogspot.c...golem.html?m=0

THe 1920 Golem is the start of his month.

[Gary Banks]

I'm in.

[Newt Cox]

Pre gamiing with Tooth Fairy. A 2019 ITN UK made turd. GOod kills on characters you dont give a fuck about. It is free on Tubi. But my dumb ass bought the 4th film in this franchise today cheap. So gonna try to work thru the entire series over the next month along with my normal stuff.

[Darcy Parker]

Since I work from home, I should easily be able to knock this out this year!

[Newt Cox]

Got my 31 movies picked out.