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

[BW Haggar]

#31
Halloween IV: The Return of Michael Myers
(Dwight H. Little, 1988)

I suspect I have a very different relationship to 80s/90s numbered slasher sequels than most people who post here, in that I didn't grow up with them.

My ability to watch films of my own choosing was very restricted when I was a younger teenager, meaning that, by the time I had access to these films, I was already too snobby and self-serious to want to watch them.

Therefore, I've just caught up with them as-and-when through my adult life, without experiencing the glow of nostalgia with which many/most horror fans of a certain age approach them.

As such then, here is my mature, grown up review of 'Halloween IV: The Return of Michael Myers': it's pretty solid.

The photography in particular is very good (I loved the twilight images of American gothic / Halloween-y imagery under the credits sequence - super atmospheric), although it's a shame it's not shot in scope, preventing it from fully recapturing the aesthetic of Carpenter's original.

The script is what you'd get if you told a set of AI alorithms to write a Halloween sequel; just does exactly what's expected of it at every turn.

It's all very slickly done, fun and exciting, and understands how to use 'the shape' properly, without any messing about. Delivers the goods, basically.

That said, it's *maybe* about 10% too restrained and.. I dunno... mainstream-y to really hit the bullseye?

It suffers very badly from "all the characters are everywhere all the time" syndrome, and brief moments like the bit where Dr Loomis tries to 'reason' with Michael at the gas station (treating him like the human being he's just spent three movies telling everybody he's NOT) feel lame and off-message. And Michael is just *not quite ruthless enough* to be as scary as he should be (eg, when the script demands, he's very slow at achieving simple things like crossing rooftops to slaughter unarmed teens).

Still, these are minor complaints. If it was 1988, and I'd gone out with my friends to see a 'Halloween' movie, we'd have got our money's worth.

B+


#32
Night of the Demons
(Kevin S. Tenney, 1988)

Yes, it's a 1988 movies from directors with middle initials double-bill!

This has never been one of my favourite late '80s horror-comedies, but it had been a while since I'd seen it, and fuck it... it's halloween weekend, so you've got to throw on a few random things like this.

Well, sad to say, I liked it even less than I did previously. The humour is all so crass and contrived, and the characters are so relentlessly dislikeable. "Charm" is a word I end up using a lot in reviews, and most of this movie's obvious inspirations/competitors ('Return of the Living Dead', 'Night of the Creeps', 'Vamp', etc.) have it in spades. This one though -- zilch.

It's basically just cheap and stupid, and its attempts to 'shock' through foul language and brief nudity don't exactly add up to a whole hill of beans in a world where John Waters movies are easily accessible & socially acceptable viewing.

There are a few cool moments (the famous ones, basically), but aside from that, I'm just too old (and/or not drunk enough) to get with this shit anymore.

Watching it felt a bit like spending an evening hanging around in a car park with a bunch of rich, white 16 year olds who think they're "punk". IE, not something I have time for at this point in my life.

Brian Trenchard Smith's sequel is far more enjoyable, I reckon.

C

[Darcy Parker]

Back to it tonight with Phenomena via Shudder. All-time greatest decapitation in film!

[Gary Banks]

OCTOBER 2022

001-Castle Of Blood **** Sinister Cinema dvd-r
002-In Search Of Dracula ** Kino bd
003-Dawn Of The Dead(78) **** bd
004-Carnival Of Sinners * TCM recording
005-The Whip and The Body ***1/2 Midnight Choir dvd-r
006-Panic In Year Zero! ** bd
007-Doctor Blood's Coffin *1/2 MGM dvd-r
008-Ladron De Cadaveres ** bd
009-Castle Of Evil **1/2 dvd-r of vhs
010-From Dusk To Dawn Season One ack! dvd
011-Whoever Slew Auntie Roo *1/2 bd
012-Curse Of Frankenstein (1:37:1)**** bd
013-Tales Of Frankenstein **1/2 bd
014-War Of The Planets** TCM recording
015-I Drink Your Blood ** BD
016-Children Shouldn't Play With Dead Things **** bd
017-Tales From The Crypt Season One *1/2 dvd
018-Deathmaster **1/2 dvd
019-Planet Of The Vampires *** Old Kino bd
020-Night of the Demon (UK 1957) **** bd
021-Black Sabbath **** bd
022-I,Vampiri ***1/2 bd
023-Mark Of The Vampire *** bd
024-Dracula Vs Frankenstein (71) **bd
025-Mill Of The Stone Women ****bd
026-Beast of The Yellow Night ***1/2 bd
027-Creature With The Blue Hand *** dvd
028-Brain Of Blood ** BD
029-Star Crash * bd
030-The Poughkeepsie Tapes *** dvd
031-Dracula (58) **** UK bd
032-The Land That Time Forgot ** bd
033-The Murder Clinic *** German bd
034-The Strange Door **1/2 bd
035-I Walked With A Zombie **** dvd
036-Village of the Damned (60) **** bd
037-Alice, Sweet Alice ** TCM
038-The Black Abbot **** German bd
039-Willy's Wonderland Ack! Ack! Ack! bd
040-Dead Of Night (1945) **** bd
041-Master of Horror *** bd
042-An Evening of Edgar Allan Poe ***1/2 bd
043-Black Pit of Dr M **** dvd
044-Werewolf Vs Vampire Woman (87 minute) ***

[Newt Cox]

Day 28 BrightBurn




TITLE-Brightburn



SOURCE-Tubi Streaming

Wanted something that was horror and another genre mixed to watch today. So went to Tubi,the best of the free services for horror and just oddball shit. Saw they had added Brightburn and what the hell it is horror/capeshit.

For those that have no clue what Tubi is and are old enough to remember the video store days. Netflix,Hulu and Disney+ are like Blockbuster/Hollywood Video and Family Video. But Tubi and Amazon Prime? They are that grubby mom and pop local video store. It opened in 1980 and has just one copy of any tape. But has stuff you don't find other places like The Cars that Eat People or both Evil Dead movies. Tubi has ad breaks but they are short and you get like 5 or so per movie. So free and not plagued with ads.

Started up the movie and looked it up to see which poster art I wanted to put up top. Most of them looked like that or were a tiny variant of it. Wait this came out in 2019??? Was thinking it was 2015 or so. But it makes sense it was 2019 I had posted a video about Rick Veitch's Maximortal vol 1 tpb and someone asked me if I knew about the movie ripping off the comic.

Elizabeth Banks and her husband can't have kids,and live in Brightburn Kansas on an old farm. A rocket crashes and in it is a baby. They adopt the baby and hide the rocket in the barn.

Yea this sounds like the Superman story,which it is. But when this kid hits 12 and puberty hits he starts gaining his powers. He gets mad the pushmower isn't working right and slings it across the yard. Then has this wanting to shove his hand into the still rotating blade.

When on a camping trip withh his dad,after getting the Sex talk,this creepy kid floats to the house of some classmate he is crushing on. Is floating outside her second story window and the girl sees him.

The only thing that appears to harm this kid is the ship. Which gets destroyed near the end of the film,in a great scene. And it ends with us seeing news reports of Brightburn rampaging all over the world. Leaving me to think we might get more films.

The film cost close to 12 million and made a bit over 32 million at the box office. So I am sure after home video and all that it made 3 times what it costs. But no sequel in sight sadly.

Does Brightburn rip off Maximortal vol 1? No not really. They both use the age old "What if Superman was evil and a moody teen" idea. This idea was done before Maximortal and part of the story when Veitch told it was parodying the already well mined trope of evil Superman.

I enjoy Brightburn. Sure I rather have a Maximortal movie. But that ain't happening. Sure I wish we got another film in this series. But yea looks like that ain't happening either.

Brightburn is worth watching and appears to making the rounds on the various streaming sites. Brightburn gets a B.


COdy covers The Orphanage
http://codysfilmandtvblog.blogspot.c...-2007.html?m=1

[f.ramses]

10/27
Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956)

[BW Haggar]

#30
Maniac Killer
(Andrea Bianchi, 1987)

With a stressful week at work four fifths behind me, I felt the urge this evening to unwind with a beer and some ridiculous, sleazoid nonense.

With a CV which includes 'Strip Nude For Your Killer', 'Cry of the Prostitute', 'Burial Ground' and 'Malabimba', Andrea Bianchi clearly has a solid gold instinct for delivering exactly such material.... and here we find him in 1987, helming A EUROCINE PRODUCTION, with BO SVENSON, and a special appearance by ROBERT GINTY. How could I resist?

Well, long story short: expectations crushed. This was terrible.

It's one of those movies for which it's difficult to provide a concise plot synopsis, because there are far too many characters, none of whom ever do anything interesting, but basically the essence of the horror aspect is that Ginty is... some random rich guy... who, for reasons which are never made sufficiently clear, leads a small clique of, I dunno, perverts of some kind, who kidnap women who have displeased him and chain them up in generic, Satanic cult style torture dungeon.

Despite this sleazy premise though, there is very little exploitation or horror content here. In fact, after one token incident of sexualised violence during the opening, subsequent scenes all rather have the feel of a '30s serial, in which the kidnapped women thrash about in their chains, whilst the villains cackle and threaten to do unspeakable things to them... but very rarely actually get around to it.

Meanwhile, as per Eurocine's usual '80s house style, most of the run time is actually taken up with footage of liveried servants striding around various rented chateaus, a group of shabby-looking cops incessently getting in and out of a Citroen with a flashing light stuck on top, sight-seeing shots of Paris landmarks, and an absolutely excruciating parallel storyline in which Svenson's red herring research scientist uses a pile of BBC Micro computers to try to teach a poor, mute idiot boy to speak, so that he can heroically tell the cops who's been doin' the crimes.

English dubbing is about on the level of a lower tier '70s kung fu movie.

I dunno.... there are a few moments of random, low level amusement here which made it a marginally better option than just staring at the wall whilst drinking beer, but overall, very little here to recommend to anyone with access to any other movies at all.

D

[Gary Banks]

OCTOBER 2022

001-Castle Of Blood **** Sinister Cinema dvd-r
002-In Search Of Dracula ** Kino bd
003-Dawn Of The Dead(78) **** bd
004-Carnival Of Sinners * TCM recording
005-The Whip and The Body ***1/2 Midnight Choir dvd-r
006-Panic In Year Zero! ** bd
007-Doctor Blood's Coffin *1/2 MGM dvd-r
008-Ladron De Cadaveres ** bd
009-Castle Of Evil **1/2 dvd-r of vhs
010-From Dusk To Dawn Season One ack! dvd
011-Whoever Slew Auntie Roo *1/2 bd
012-Curse Of Frankenstein (1:37:1)**** bd
013-Tales Of Frankenstein **1/2 bd
014-War Of The Planets** TCM recording
015-I Drink Your Blood ** BD
016-Children Shouldn't Play With Dead Things **** bd
017-Tales From The Crypt Season One *1/2 dvd
018-Deathmaster **1/2 dvd
019-Planet Of The Vampires *** Old Kino bd
020-Night of the Demon (UK 1957) **** bd
021-Black Sabbath **** bd
022-I,Vampiri ***1/2 bd
023-Mark Of The Vampire *** bd
024-Dracula Vs Frankenstein (71) **bd
025-Mill Of The Stone Women ****bd
026-Beast of The Yellow Night ***1/2 bd
027-Creature With The Blue Hand *** dvd
028-Brain Of Blood ** BD
029-Star Crash * bd
030-The Poughkeepsie Tapes *** dvd
031-Dracula (58) **** UK bd
032-The Land That Time Forgot ** bd
033-The Murder Clinic *** German bd
034-The Strange Door **1/2 bd
035-I Walked With A Zombie **** dvd
036-Village of the Damned (60) **** bd
037-Alice, Sweet Alice ** TCM
038-The Black Abbot **** German bd
039-Willy's Wonderland Ack! Ack! Ack! bd
If you have the chance to watch Willy's Wonderland, run like hell the other way. The only good thing about this movie is that Cage doesn't utter a word. Too bad that doesn't apply to the rest of the cast.

[Newt Cox]

Day 27 The Wasp Woman (1995)




TITLE-The Wasp Woman AKA Forbidden Beauty



SOURCE-DVD-R made from premiere airing on Showtime in 1995




Somehow out of all these mid 90s Roger Corman Theater remakes of older mostly PD films I have seen the 95 Wasp Woman remake,known as Forbidden Beauty in some areas,the most. Saw it when it first aired,cause I had seen and felt disappointed in the original. Then a few years later the remake was rerun on Showtime and a bachelor crash pad house a buddy owned had myyself and 5 others drinking and watching it and laughing. Then back close to a decade ago when I got this DVD-r rip of a VHS recording ,in SP on a good HIFI VCR,of the original TV airing I watched it again. Then today.

Why out of the 5 or so of these remakes I own is this one I go back to often? Mostly cause the others are remakes of films I already enjoy. But that original Wasp Woman,that is in the top 5 movies I own the most copies of on DVD thanks to it being PD in an in every multipak of horror,is a boring as hell crap fest of a film. We get right at 4 minutes tops of Wasp Woman in the film. This remake while having soome dodgy FX at least gives us plenty of the title creature.

The remake also has Jennifer Rubin,who uses a very very obvious body double for the nudity in her sex scene,and Maria Ford. And this is Maria after she had some visits to the plastic surgeon. That original I can't tell you who anyone in the cast is. Hell the remake has Fred Olen Ray as the higher up that tells Rubin she is an old hag.

Directed by Jim Wynorski,this remake is the perfect example of how to reamake and improve an old horror flick. Now is it a undiscovered modern classic of horror? Hell NO! But it is a fun mid 90s Creature Feature that should be seen by more people. It is perfect for streaming on say Tubi or Amazon Prime. And for all I know it could be on one of those.

The Wasp Woman gets a B-

Cody covers Wolf Creek 2
http://codysfilmandtvblog.blogspot.c...-2014.html?m=1

[Mark Tolch]

Went to a fleapit theater to see TERRIFIER 2. It was the perfect venue for this outrageously brutal and mean slasher flick. It's needlessly long (138 minutes) and horribly paced, but it has some of the craziest kills I've ever seen (it gets close to AUGUST UNDERGROUND territory at times). The first 15 minutes are extraordinary and surreal, but then there's a weird 10-minute dream sequence that throws the whole movie off-balance and the pacing never really recovers. This turns out to be the film's major flaw: a good sequence is often followed up with a long, boring one. Not sure what the obnoxious run time is all about, actually; the original was a perfectly-paced, plotless nightmare and it worked beautifully. The bloated length here just exposes the lack of any depth to the story - it gets really tedious at times.

I just saw the first one for the first time a few weeks ago, and the 2nd one a couple of nights ago.

First one is a nifty low-budget kill flick. I don't know that it deserves all of the hype it gets, but it was okay.

The second one I found to be a waste of time. The kills are so far overboard it gets into, "Okay, next, already" territory. And yeah, it lost it's footing way early on in the film, so the murder scenes were the only thing that kept it going. The run time was a horrible miscalculation; cut down on the going back for third helpings gore and trim the movie by 45 minutes to an hour, and it would probably be something I'd recommend.

[James Reed]

I actually streamed a horror movie last night before I played my daily music and ate supper. It was Terrifier, a killer clown slasher. Some brutal scenes, especially the girl who is sawed in half! The ending did not make any sense to me, though. I know there is a sequel, which figures. I give it 3 stars.

[f.ramses]

10/25
El Colegio de la Muerte
Alucarda

10/26
Zinda Laash (The Living Corpse)
Panic Beats
La Venganza de la Momia
Parasite (1982)
Fiend Without a Face

[Newt Cox]

Day 26 Dinosaur Hotel




TITLE-Dinosaur Hotel



SOURCE-ITN DVD

ITN aka the International Turd Network,no not really.But they appear to mostly release UK or Spanish made films. And their releases are usually shit.

Over the last year I learned about how there is a pile of studios putting out low budget DTV horror. And every week various stores have these films for 5 to 10 bucks.

Well it was back in the start of summer ,CodyLL of Cody's blog was doing a pile of dinosaur films to get ready for the newest Jurassic World film,I saw Dinosaur Hotel and figured what the hell. Saw it was from ITN and knew then the film would look cheap. And it was cheap,3 bucks. Well you get what you pay for.

A lady,who brings her kids,is at a hotel where dinosaurs roam. And is part of a game. Theree are twists and stuff. But the dinos look like stuff from the PS1 game Dino Crisis. And the kills look like cut scenes from that game.

The acting is from ok to HOLY HELL HOW BAD CAN YOU GET. With the lead lady's daughter being horrible.

The bad CGI is the only FX work in the film. And wow they do all they can to make sure the CGI isnt in the frame with most anything else. Like the scene near the end where the daughter is trapped in the kitchen. Fighting off raptors. She is swinging a club and the club and her are never in the same shot as the CGI raptor.

Every year for 31 Days of Horror I try out some low budget newer horror to see if there is a gem hidden in all the chaff. Well Dinosaur Hotel is not a gem. It is pure chaff.




Dinosaur Hotel gets a D+.


Cody covers Wolf Creek
http://codysfilmandtvblog.blogspot.c...-2005.html?m=1

[BW Haggar]

#29
Help Me... I'm Possessed!
(Charles Nizet, 1974)

You're possessed? Jeez, how'd you think I feel!

In technical terms, this quintessential example of juvenile, barrel-scraping, sleazoid trash is about on the level of an Al Adamson movie... only vastly more eventful and entertaining.

In a plasterboard castle out in "the desert", slobbish bully Dr Blackwood purports to operate a sanatorium for the emotionally disturbed. Behind closed doors however, he's both an ideologically driven mad scientist and a sadistic religious maniac... which seems like a difficult equation to square, but whatcha gonna do?

Anyway, there are drooling loonies, pervy hunchbacks and lumbering mutes wandering around all over the place, and the doctor has a secret underground lair where he keeps some particularly unwholesome, howling specimens locked up in cages. Here, women get chained to the ceiling in their underwear - one gets shut in a coffin with a poisonous snake for the 'crime' of provoking the male patients - whilst some poor psycho gets his head lopped off by the guillotine which takes pride of place in the centre of the room.

At one point, the doctor gets in a pickle because he needs to take his patients "to the general hospital" (for some reason?), but he's already murdered all his staff, so he resorts to herding about a dozen of them into his station wagon and drving them off himself.

More intriguingly, the doctor's simpleton sister is 'best friends' with what appears to be a shapeless, tentacled monster (represented by cut-away shots to a mass of writhing, red spaghetti), which roars like a lion, and rampages around at night bloodily tearing people to pieces. ("It's just some sense of evil which wandered into the desert..," Blackwood helpfully explains.)

It's little things like this which cause the local sheriff to start impertinently poking around asking questions, prompting an epic battle of wills between the two slovenly, overweight alpha males which can only end in disaster, with Blackwood's frumpy, mini-dress clad wife caught in the cross-fire.

Stunningly awful as this all is, it's difficult not to admire this movie's "throw it all at the wall and see what sticks" approach to the horror genre, and at 73 minutes, well... to invoke those hallowed words which have ended a thousand reviews, it's certainly never boring.

No one is possessed by anything, at any point, incidentally.

B-

[Matt H.]

I really like POPCORN, but I think it drops the ball during the final half hour. Otherwise, it's excellent and one of the standout horror films of the '90s.

[Newt Cox]

Day 25 Popcorn




TITLE-Popcorn



SOURCE-Shudder Streaming Service

Oh man the early 90s horror scene was so odd. The slasher subgenre was dying. And if you listen to some fans horror was shit in the 90s until Scream. Which of course is wrong. There was good horror all through out the 90s.

When cable finally reached the rural ass hell southern town I grew up in,tail end of 1990,I paid out of my pocket for Showtime and TMC. Which where the only MOVIE channels our cable offered. Sure I wasn't making much at my part time after school job. But 20 bucks a month went to making sure I had Showtime and TMC. And at least another 30 a month went to buying blank VHS. Cause I was recording any horror movie that aired on Showtime or TMC. It was late 1991 when I saw that Showtime was airing Popcorn a bunch of times the next month. I had wanted to see Popcorn. But something else came out the same weekend as it. And we all went to see that. The next weekend Popcorn was gone. I had hoped to rent it. But no video store in the area carried it. But Showtime was showing it 5 times in one month. First time airing it at the oddest hour of 2am on a Wednesday.

Sure I had a VCR in my bedroom by this time. And I could have just set my VCR recorded it and watched it Wednesday evening after school and work. But nope I stayed up all night to see it. And I fucking loved it.

A group of college kids are hosting an all night movie marathon at a soon to be demolished theater. This is a fund raiser for their drama club IIRC. Thanks to Ray Walston,who runs a film merch shop,they get some great gimmicks to go with the three films they show.

Those 3 films are Mosquito,a throw back to the 50s giant insect flicks. And this movie is in 3d. Loved the one scene we see from this film where a giant mosquito lands on a car roof. And shoves it's sucker through the roof and into a yokel's head. Then sucks his brain and everything else out. They have a great FX of the head collasping on itself that I still think looks amazing.

Another of the films is Attack of the Amazing Electrafied Man,which like the Tingler has seats in the theater wired up to a board and whoever is at that board can give the people in the seats a nice shock. This reminds me of all the 40s era films where dudes get powers through accidents.

Last up is The Stench,filmed on SMELL O VISION. Like Polyester from John Waters.

While going through the lot of stuff Walston brought they find a 4th film. Titled Possesser. So the students screen it and it shows stuff similar to what our lead Maggie has been dreaming. Odd stuff with fire and death. Seems the director of this thought lost film killed his family before he could shoot the final scene. And set a theater on fire where he was showing what he had shot of his film.

So while these films are airing to a packed house. Someone is not only killing off the students. But is a master of disquise.Which we learn when people we saw die show up in later scenes.

We find out who the killer is. Our lead Maggie ,played by the great Jill Scholen who yall might remember from the original Stepfather film,gets captured by the killer and we learn who they are and why they are doing what they are doing. I know this isn't a film lots of have seen so I am not gonna full spoil the film.

Overall the film is just fun. But is is one I forgot about. Sure from 91 until 2010 or so I had that VHS I had recorded it on,same tape also had Subspecies 2 on it. And I would watch it maybe once every 5 years.

I had really just forgotten about the film until I saw Code Red announce they were releasing it to DVD. FOund out there was a previous DVD release that was out of print,and IIRC it was 4:3 instead of OAR. I figured it was time to replace my well worn VHS tape. And since Code Red hinted it would be out soon I gave that tape away to a friend.

Then I keep hearing that some fan has the DVD rights to the film and is putting out a ULTIMATE FAN EDITION. Also claiming that Code Red doesn't have the rights. And it started this online war of words that lasted what felt like 40 years.

Finally in the past 5 years,IIRC,Synapse finally released the ULTIMATE FAN EDITION. I think there is a blu ray release. But the cost of it was stupid high. So I passed.Figuring there would be a cheaper DVD release and I would get that. Plus not long after the blu ray got out someone sent my a rip of the film off the blu. I ain't seen a cheaper dvd release of the film so far. But Shudder has Popcorn and holy hell I think I might just drop that 35 or 40 bucks and get the blu ray. Cause this print on Shudder looks great. Way better than I remember it ever looking.

Popcorn is a nice meta slasher horror film. I like how it has ties to Deathdreams,in that they wanted Bob Clark to direct this but he turned it down so the guy that worked with him on Deathdreams directed this. Well he stared directing it and was firedd a few weeks into filming. Where he got replaced by one of the lead actors from PORKYS! Yep no joke. Just like Jill Scholen,she wasn't the original actress cast to play the lead. But when the director got replaced she did too.

Popcorn gets a B+.


Cody covers High Tension
http://codysfilmandtvblog.blogspot.c...-2003.html?m=1