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

[Darcy Parker]

Today's movie is Tammy and the T-Rex, in the Tanny and the Teenage T-Rex version.

It was simultaneously trying too hard, and not trying hard enough, but it was mildly amusing at times.

[Newt Cox]

Day 9 Cody covers Who Can Kill a Child

http://codysfilmandtvblog.blogspot.c...ar-un.html?m=1

TITLE-Willy's Wonderland



SOURCE-Hulu

Few years back I watched and reviewed the Banana Splits movie for 31 days of horror. A film I enjoyed but people were really split on. Then last year I started hearing about a new film. One were Nic Cage is the lead,is silent through out the film. And this film has a premise similar to Banana Splits.

Cage is a drifter. His car gets a flat in a rural town.A crooked auto repair man tells him he can fix the car but since Cage has almost no cash to pay for the repairs he has to stay the night inside a closed children's eatery Willy's Wonderland is the name of the place. Cage will get locked in and spend the entire night cleaning the place up.

We find out that Willy's which is like Chuck E Cheese was a big thing back in the 80s thru mid 90s. Then closed. but the founder was an evil killer. And all the animatronics at Willy's are evil and alive. So the townsfolk set traps to get drifters to be "fed" to the evil Willy and his gang of animal killer robots.

I was really surprised at how good this was. Yea I know this film and Banana Splits film got made cause of how popular the horror video game Five Nights at Freddys is. I was a young child when places like Showbiz Pizza and Chuck E Cheese opened up. Sure the robot animals were part of the reason I wanted to goto these places,but the main draw to me was the huge selection of video games. Back about 10 years ago I took my cousins then young sons to a near by Chuck E Cheese. The pizza wasn't worth a crap and while we were given a pile of tokens to play the games ,all but 2 of the games were just ticket redemption machines.

The FX work in this is really good. Nice realistic looking gore. Plus the robots looks well made. Like something you would see at a kid's birthday party in 1990.

Nic Cage is great as Janitor,yea his name is never given,he never talks so the credits just list him as Janitor. The rest of the cast is decent.

If this is on a streaming app you have access too it is worth watching. Hell it is one of the better modern horror films with Cage.




Willy's Wonderland gets a B-

[BW Haggar]

#9
The Revenge of Frankenstein
(Terence Fisher, 1958)

Although this is objectively an excellent film in most (all?) respects, for some reason it's never been amongst my favourite Hammer gothics.

I think this is perhaps because it's the most urban and interior-based of their early colour horrors, with a far stronger strain of social realism and critique of the class system and so forth running through it.

All of which is fine, but for a gothic horror, there's also a strange absence of villainy at the film's centre. Although a few of the grotesque supporting characters are a bit horrible, the story's principals are all basically acting from comparitively pure motives. Whereas in 'Curse..', Frankenstein was an amoral, self-serving scoundrel, here he is reinvented as a driven and determined scientist whose crucial flaw is that he's simply a bit cracked, failing to recognise the obvious problems wth his methodology or to scale back his plans in accordance with them.

Obviously this development created a far richer and more ambiguous character for Peter Cushing to get his teeth into across the rest of the series than if he'd just been playing a blackhearted bastard again and again, and, just as obviously, crafting a story in which disasters result from thoughtlessness, bad ideas and conflicting personal agendas rather than moustache-twirling evil-doing is good writing, far more reflective of actual human nature than the binary oppositions usually found in gothic melodrama.

But, at the same time, I suspect that stuff which is nuanced and realistic and "good" (in the official/high brow sense) kind of detracts from the glorious sense of comforting escapism which I tend to seek from Hammer horror, and which I don't really get in huge quantities from this one, regardless of its obvious strengths.

B+


#10
Def By Temptation
(James Bond III, 1990)

Oh boy, this was an odd one.

Going in blind, what I was expecting, I suppose, was a kind of horror variant on the 'new black cinema' movement of the early '90s. Like, 'New Jack City' with vampires, or somesuch.

What I got instead was a heart-on-sleeve personal film from writer/director/producer/musical supervisor/actor James Bond III (anyone sniggering at the back should be pointed toward the film's heartfelt dedication to the memories of James Bonds I and II), interspersed with slick erotic horror seduction/murder set pieces in which demonic femme fatale Cynthia Bond bloodily dispatches assorted sleazy dudes she's picked up at the singles bar around which most of the film's action takes place.

Although this feels ike a very marginal, independent production, the photography, music and effects are all pretty good, and the film's cast (which includes Bill Nunn, Kadeem Hardison, Melba Moore and a cameo from Samuel L. Jackson) is absolutely fantastic, ensuring that pretty much every character on-screen is appealing and funny, and that all the lines (whether scripted or improvised) land just right.

This makes it all the stranger then that Bond - who is a rather awkward, diminutive young man with no apparent screen presence or acting chops - should choose to cast himself in the lead role; but, brilliantly, instead of seeming like complete self-indulgence, this decision actually works really well.

Playing a trainee pastor visiting the big city for the first time after a sheltered upbringing in North Carolina, Bond's awkwardness on camera works to his advantage, and - in contrast to the usual expectations around a director insisting on casting himself in his own movie - he comes across as quiet, humble and incredibly sweet; the kind of character who is impossible to dislike, even when he's ruminating in voiceover on evangelical life lessons or his own family history.

Indeed, it is the naturalistic big brother / little brother relationship between Bond and Hardison which is at the heart of the film, and will likely live on in viewers' minds long after the various attempts to recreate scenes from 'Fright Night', 'Videodrome', 'The Exorcist' and so on have faded from memory.*

Touching, charming and completely crazy, I'm kind of in awe of what James Bond III achieved here.

A-

* Surprisingly, checking IMDB reveals that James Bond III is actually primarily known as an actor, and had been appearing in film & TV, initially as a child star I presume, since 1977. This knowledge completely overturns the assumptions I'd formed about him whilst watching the film, but, uh... I dunno, go figure. Perhaps the film's commentary track will help provide some context.

[Darcy Parker]

Just finished Marvel's Werewolf by Night.

Fuck Disney.

[Newt Cox]

Film 8

TITLE-Santo&Blue Demon vs Dr Frankenstein
SOURCE-Ultimo Guapo fansubbed mp4 file




A few years back during 31 days of horror I covered a Santo film. And it was cause of Santo movies that I got into the Lucha Libre style of pro wrestling.




Now for years most of the home video releases of Santo,and Blue Demon,movies were badly dubbed sometimes edited down. Plus looked like a 5th genertaion dub of a EP mode VHS.




There has been a few attempts to put out in the States good cleaned up dvds of some of the Santo films. Usually with the films subtitled and including a few extras. Plus the prints used for these DVDs appeared to have gotten a bit of clean up done to them.




But even with this happening there is still piles of this films that you can't get legit copies of,well legit copies that are either subbed or dubbed in English. And sure I took 2 years of Spanish in high school,over 30 years ago,but my Spanish skills aren't good enough to tranlate the films. So you gotta hope that some amazing fan out there has fansubbed these films. Thankfully over the past 20 years I have been finding fansubbed copies of most of the Santo and/or Blue Demon films.




The one I am covering today is Santo y Blue Demon contra el doctor Frankenstein (Santo&Blue Demon vs Dr Frankenstein). It is from 1974 directed by Migel M.Delgado. Back in 91 when I first learned of the luchadore series of films made in Mexico one of the ones I saw clips of and really wanted to see if this one. You get two Lucha legends and they are fighting Dr Frankenstein. But I never saw a legit release of this on VHS/DVD that had either English dubs or subs. And while I have once or twice watched a Santo film in Spanish and figured out the plot,with this one I didn't feel like having to pause the movie every sentence to try to quickly translate what I had just heard. I doubt it exists now ,but for a few years there was this great blog that was full of links to direct downloads of various fansubbed Mexican films. I saw they had S&BD vs DR Frankenstein and grabbed it. But of course the direct download link was with dropbox and it took 7 hours to grab a 2 gig file.




Before I get into the film I want to thank the "Ultimo Guapo" sub title group. No idea if they are still around but they are the ones that subbed this film and a few others I got off blog of links. The subs read fairly natural. And I remember seeing people that are way more fluent than I am in Spanish posting comments about how the subs were really close to being perfect translantions. No clue where you would find this version of the film currently. The blog I mentioned got deleted sometime in early 2021. Same day two blogs that had links to various comic book scans got deleted. Heard rumors of who ever ran the blogs getting Cease and desists letters from rights holders. But I bet if you google Ultimo Guapo you might find somewhere/someone that can lead you to the files.




Santo and Blue Demon are our heroic leads. I have always loved how in these films the general public acts like Santo running around in his mask and street clothes is perfectly normal. You know if you put on say a Nacho Libre mask and t shirt and jeans and tried to go buy some milk from Delchamps you would be told to take the mask off or leave. But not in the world these films happen in.Hell Santo and Blue Demon have more power and authority than the cops. Jorge Russek is the Dr Frankenstein. Never seen this actor in anything else. Looking him up doesn't like much else he did has gotten much attention in the States.




The Frankenstein in this film is supposedly the grandson of the famous Dr Frankenstein from the novel/movies. He is kidnapping women and doing all kinds of crazy experiments on them. Like trepaning the ladies so he can then swap out their brains.Rebun Aguirre(as Dr Genaro Molina) is Dr Franks assisstant. This trepanning doesn't work out like Dr Frank and Dr Molina intended. The ladies die. So Genaro talks Frankenstein into having the bodies return to their homes as "the living dead". Using this to create a panic. Which will distract the public,and of course the cops,from all the highly illegal antics our duo of demented doctors are up too.The doctors end up putting devices in these "zombies" so they can control them remote control style.




So what is the two Drs big plan they are wanting to keep people distracted with these robot zombies? LOL they want to kidnap Santo and place Santo's brain in a monster the doctors have made. Then making an army of killer monsters that are as tough and fast as Santo.




Now going into any of these Santo films you gotta be ready for them to be a bit cheesy and cheap feeling. And even oness made in the 70s feel like something from the 40s or 50s. They are films for when you want some action and rather not think too much. With this one adding some elements of horror and science fiction. You also gotta be ready for at least 1 wrestling match each film. This one has Santo tagging up with Blue Demon. And isn't to bad.




Overall this is one of the best Santo "horror" films I have seen. The plot is pretty decent. It looks better than most of them. Plus the two Doctors are so good. With Genaro stealing every scene he is in.




Santo&Blue Demon Vs Dr Frankenstein gets a C+


Cody covers The Wicker Man

http://codysfilmandtvblog.blogspot.c...-1973.html?m=1

[BW Haggar]

#8
Glorious
(Rebekah McKendry, 2022)

My first time venturing into the blighted realm of 'a Shudder original', but this one got a rave from Denis at The Horror!? blog, which was enough to persuade me to give it a go.

Starts off as a rather pleasing high concept oddity: fleeing from a catastrophic break-up, a sad-sack, emotionally strung out man finds himself trapped in the bathroom of a remote highway rest stop, with a Lovecraftian Elder God in the adjoining cubicle.

The God (who speaks in deep, sonorous, ingratiating tones) won't let him leave because it needs something from him to complete a ritual which will prevent it being trapped in insanity-inducingly horrible corporeal form, and thus avoid the ensuing annihiliation of all life in the universe.

Could that 'something' possibly involve the glory hole in the side of the God's cubicle...?

The cosmic horror stuff here is very well done. It seems to draw pretty heavily on August Derleth's more orderly / gnostic reinterpretation of the Cthulhu Mythos, which I'm not usually a big fan of, but as this one is strictly 'non-canon' and exists within the context of its own cosmology, I'll give it a pass.

Indeed, it is the conflict between Lovecraft's cosmic nihilism and the idea of there being a kind of moral balance to the universe which essentially fuels the film's drama - all of which are unpacked quite nicely, with a minimum of self-serious pretention, I should note.

That said, this one does rather sag in the middle, despite the concise 79 min run-time, briefly threatening to turn into some kind of one man, avant garde theatre piece, whilst the final act also centres around a plot twist which I just plain could not buy and felt undermined the essential points about human nature the film is trying to make.... (pure speculation: perhaps director McKendry felt similarly, as the revelation of said twist is handled in a fairly ambigious / off-hand manner, suggesting the filmmakers' hearts weren't really in it?)

Regardless, this is a really interesting and thought-provoking effort, with a few good laughs too - well worth a watch.

B+


#9
Living Dead at the Monchester Morgue
(Jorge Grau, 1974)

First time around the paddock with my brand new, no frills, standard edition Synapse blu-ray of this one, and to my eyes it looks just splendid.

Feels strange to see good ol' '..Manchester Morgue' is such pristine, scrubbed up condition. Based on chat in the other thread, I'd imagine Quentin Tarantino would probably not approve, but you know what? I can now see the artwork and books in the background of the sets, and can read the road signs and the inscriptions of tombstones, and can see the textures of everyone's clothes - and cinema is all about responding to & enjoying visual stimuli, so the hell with him.

As to the film itself: I can scarcely imagine anyone reading this isn't entirely familiar with it, so nuff said.

Paired with a bottle of cheap Spanish red, which was just perfect.

A

[f.ramses]

10/7
Blood Feast (1963)

"Have you ever had ...AN EGYPTIAN FEAST???"(!)

[Gary Banks]

OCTOBER 2022

001-Castle Of Blood ****
002-In Search Of Dracula **
003-Dawn Of The Dead(78) ****
004-Carnival Of Sinners *
005-The Whip and The Body ***1/2
006-Panic In Year Zero! **
007-Doctor Blood's Coffin *1/2
008-Ladron De Cadaveres **
009-Castle Of Evil **1/2
010-From Dusk To Dawn Season One ack!
011-Whoever Slew Auntie Roo *1/2
012-Curse Of Frankenstein (1:37:1)****
013-Tales Of Frankenstein **1/2
This may be sacrilege, but I prefer the 1:37 ratio on COF over the others.

[f.ramses]

Sadly not an adaptation of the Jack Ketchum novel

Years ago I grabbed a copy of The Girl Next Door thinking it was the adaptation of the Ketchum book but it was actually the 2004 comedy. Probably watched about a half hour of it before realizing it was the wrong movie. lol

[Darcy Parker]

I just finished the Shudder original Offseason. Sadly not an adaptation of the Jack Ketchum novel, it is a dull and pointless drag of a movie.

[f.ramses]

10/6
The Mask of Satan (Black Sunday)

A great movie for sure but the last few times I've watched this I fell asleep for parts of it because I put it on too late and was tired, instead of that happening last night I kept getting distracted. Probably didn't miss much but will probably do this again soon...

[Newt Cox]

Day 7

Title-My Bloody Birthday
Source-DVD

So over the last year I noticed that the local Walmart always has 4 to 8 DTV new release horror films for sale. Usually being around 8 bucks each. Having a slipcase,that is the same as the DVD cover. The covers have a similar look to them. Almost always the films are from the UK or Europe. Have no extras besides a trailer. And these have become the new "Wizard big box vhs on the shelf at Video Showboat". You never know if you are gonna get a good movie,like you did with Demons back in the mid 80s,or if you are gonna get a piece of shit,like piles of Bruno Matei films also in the mid 80s.

With My Bloody Birthday you get a mixture of both. For every just strange as fuck dream/nightmare like scene of what I think is the director's clown fetish on screen there is something that is so just bad it takes balances out the good of the nightmare clown fetish stuff. The sound and music is pretty good. Which might be cause this is an Italian film. Most of those Euro Horrors I grabbed off the video store shelf,from Argento,Soavi and Fulci,had great scores and sound design.

The makeup and gore FX is pretty good. Appearing to be mostly practical. Hell from what I can see the film was shot in English,which depending on the person the bad dubbing either helped or hindered those Euro Horrors in the 70s/80s. On this one being shot in English depends on the actor/actress. The lead actress Kateryna KorChynska is pretty damn good. I mean it is obvious English isn't her first language.




But once you get use to the sometimes odd ways she phrases things or says certain words you notice how she is doing great as a young lady. One who had something so tragic happen at a childhood birthday party that she refuses to celebrate her birthday anymore. Now she is 21 and keeps seeing creepy clowns all over the places. Clowns that only she sees.




The rest of the cast are decent. Just keep in mind that this is the modern version of say renting Stage Fright from Phar More Video in 1990. Know going in that there will be things that make no sense. Just let the nightmarish visuals and sometimes really well done music stings and score wash over you.

My Blood Birthday gets a C+


Cody covers Viy
http://codysfilmandtvblog.blogspot.c...-1967.html?m=1

[Gary Banks]

OCTOBER 2022

001-Castle Of Blood ****
002-In Search Of Dracula **
003-Dawn Of The Dead(78) ****
004-Carnival Of Sinners *
005-The Whip and The Body ***1/2
006-Panic In Year Zero! **
007-Doctor Blood's Coffin *1/2
008-Ladron De Cadaveres **
009-Castle Of Evil **1/2
010-From Dusk To Dawn Season One ack!

I had to bail out on FDTD. I hated the characters and felt that spending another minute with them was a waste of my time. Then again, I had a hard time sitting through the movie.

[BW Haggar]

#7
The Halfway House
(Kenneth J. Hall, 2004)

Three things caused me to note this as something which might be worth watching when Severin put it out earlier this year: Mary Woronov, Lovecraftian monsters and gratuitous nudity.

Thankfully, all of these elements are present in heroic quantities.... which is just as well, as, initially at least, this movie doesn't seem to have much else to offer.

Basically it falls into that dead-zone where it's far too camp and tongue-in-cheek to carry any weight as a horror movie, but at the same time, the script's attempts at humour are all pretty 'cringe' (as the kids would say) and nothing happens which is sufficiently bizarre or outrageous to raise any laughs.

As a result, it's about as bland as a movie featuring Woronov as a priestess of Cthulhu, practical monster effects and a constant turnover of tits and softcore sex could possibly be.

Just as I was starting to feel bad about the necessity of talking shit about an ambitious indie movie obviously made with love and enthusiasm though... well, call me crazy, but at around the halfway mark, there's a pretty great sex/gore gag, a few lines which are actually funny and well-delivered, and... I kind of started to get into it to some extent, and subsequently quite enjoyed it on an ambient kind of level (although a lot more beer would probably still have helped in that regard).

I mean, it's still probably not something I would recommend deliberately choosing to watch or paying money for (even though I did so on both counts), but if I'd encountered this one whilst flicking through channels bored out of my mind in some hotel room (which is probably more it's natural environment), I'd definitely have found my groove for the evening.

C+

[Darcy Parker]

Just finished All Hallow's Eve 2. Whereas the first one was excessive and unnecessarily mean-spirited, the second is just a boring slog.