So I have been doing pretty well at keeping to my plan to watch horror movies every day in October. Not that I've been writing here about them.
I've been sticking to watching stuff I haven't seen before... so not counting stuff like The Haunting, which played on TCM a few weeks back.
I watched a bunch of older stuff I'd been negligent about... like White Zombie (great atmosphere but the background music needs to shut up)... and I finally watched The Conjuring... which, much as I suspected, just annoyed me with it's Christian-babble.
I don't get why I can watch stuff like The Exorcist, with all its Catholic magic and not be bothered... but add in some Bible-thumpers like the Warrens and I just lose all tolerance. The Conjuring has some stuff that would otherwise strike me as ghoulish fun... but the Warrens (real or acted) just put me right out of the mood.
I don't think it's a flaw with the movie... it's a flaw with me... surely something to do with my previous life as a Christian and subsequent coming to my senses about it all. Kinda like an ex-smoker who becomes an anti-smoking zealot.
Not that I was ever 'super christian' or even a fundamentalist (though I did attend some very fundamentalist churches).
Anyway... enough with my self-analysis.
The two movies I've liked the most so far are kind of similar in that they both feature cute psycho girls on a rampage.
The Love Ones was more from the victim's point of view... but boy, was that driller killer a cute mess of a murderess. I was rooting for her right up to the bitter end... hoping against all likelihood that she and her latest boy-toy would work out their differences and find true crazy love in the Outback.
My other fave is Alyce Kills... which has a slow build up to some solid bloody rampaging in the last quarter hour. Again, the crazy girl is hot stuff... as acknowledged by everyone around her.
I'm not necessarily a fan of woman-on-a-rampage films. I did like Ms. 45 but that was mostly because of the way it looked, the sleazy urban mood it dished out.
The Loved Ones has a cheerfully gruesome thing going on... a bit in the EC end of the pool with it's head drillings and loboto-zombie filled basement.
Alyce Kills is a bit more like Ms. 45. It's got a similar vibe. Even though it's not really a revenge story there's a certain note of justice involved in the killings... and the dark philosophizing of the drug dealer guy is some of my favorite bits. I'm thinking the ending was a bit too cute though... or at least cuter than I wanted it to be.

Hopefully I'll get around to watching the Insidious sequel and Escape From Tomorrow before the month is out.

Hey! It's October!

So I'm once again going to try, and most likely fail, to watch a horror movie every day of October and come up up with some lame insight based on what I watched.

Yesterday, October 1st, I went looking for something to start off with...
I had some criteria.
I wanted to start with something somewhat decent, hopefully classic.
I also wanted to watch something I'd never seen.
It's kind of hard to hit both... I've seen most of the good old stuff... that I know of... that's available to be seen.
What I settled on was Dr. Cyclops. I'd never seen it all the way through, it's something of a classic in that it gets name-dropped in several other genre films.
Too bad my internet crashed at the last minute and I couldn't get to it...

So, instead I ignored my rules and just shoved in Undead, the Australian zombie/alien movie from a few years back.

Now, I hadn't seen Undead, so at least that box got checked... but it wasn't 'classic'.
I'm still not sure if it was 'decent'.
For one thing, I went in not knowing it was a comedy. A fairly broad comedy at that. It reminded me a bit of Peter Jackson's early films... though not nearly as gross or funny.
It's definitely one of those movies where people/zombies are big bags of red juice... waiting to be split asunder by any handy implement of destruction. Fists go through heads, a man is split in half by a steering wheel lock, a head is knocked off by a weaponized zombie-arm. All of that in the first several minutes of the movie.

So, lots of red on everyone.
The dialog is very 'wacky'. The characters are obvious archetypes.
I seem to remember reading a bit of chaff about this movie back when it came out... something about it doing a bait-n-switch on viewers by not being a 'real' zombie film. Having watched it though, I don't see how anyone could have gone further than a few minutes into it without it being obvious that some sort of sci-fi mumbo jumbo was going on... 'things from space' doing bad/weird things.
Maybe the complaints I read were about the ending... which does get pretty wild and weird, compared to the early bits of the film which are just kind of silly/dumb. Not that the ending is entirely opaque... but a lot of stuff goes vague or unexplained. It's never made quite clear what the 'aliens' are or what they're up to... what the 'zombies' were or weren't.
None of that bothered me though. I much preferred the second half of the movie over the first.
OK, two things I took from the movie...
First, I still like zombies. Despite the glut of zombie stuff from the past few years, on film I still like them as monsters. Yes, too much damn zombie crap being made... too much zombie merchandise... but when they're done well they make for great creepy monsters. (all of this goes for Cthulhu as well).
Second, despite my ersatz prejudices about Australians, they make some of my favorite movies. Just about always surprising and willing to shift around genres... a bit like Bollywood films in that.
One of my favorite movies is Muriel's Wedding. It's usually marketed as a wacky comedy... but anyone who's seen it knows that it shifts all over the couch... from slapstick to black comedy to tragedy... even a few moments encroaching on horror. It all comes together into something that's a bit surreal... and despite the feel-good ending there is a good bit of badness that remains under the carpet.
Undead has those elements as well... it shifts around. It's never really scary, but it has moments of weird and moments of sad.

Favorite bits:
The running grudge between the small-town beauty pageant contestants.
The scene late in the movie with the 'levitating' van.
The scene where the fisherman fights the zombie fish.

OK, hopefully I can get Dr. Cyclops to work tonight...

Something I Noticed...

I recently watched Lords of Salem.
I liked it.
It felt just a bit undercooked... like a bunch of scenes were missing that would have set up the protagonist as having more to her life than being witch-bait.
I think it wanted to be a bigger movie than the budget allowed for... I'd have spent less on the woman's braided hair and more on a few scenes that let me care what happened to her.

Still, I liked it 'cause I like scary witch movies.

Why do so many witch movies have 3 witches, is it because of Macbeth?

What was the blue guy?

Then, a few days later I watched The Golem. The old German silent horror film.

What I noticed is that the creepy 'Lords of Salem' music is part of the score of The Golem that is repeated in various places.

I could probably do some fancy thing to set up clips from both movies showing what I'm talking about, but I'm too lazy.

Am I trying to say Mr. Zombie is a thief for stealing that riff? Not at all, I'm actually a bit impressed that he chose to make a call out to a relatively obscure silent horror film. How many of his fans are going to pick up on that?
Most likely he did it for his own chuckles. (I'm assuming, of course, that he did it... mostly because he's a musician and a horror fan and how else did that happen?).

Anyway, does that maybe mean the blue guy was a golem?
What was the blue guy?

Supernatural

I finally finished watching my way through the 7 seasons of Supernatural that are up on Netflix.
There was a love/hate reaction to it all the way through for me... but I want to focus on what I liked about it... what I took away from it and wanted more of.
My favorite moments were when the show evoked the desperate, lonely, tragic world of its 'heroes', the hunters. Their slow descent into paranoid nutjobs or burned-out drunks. The crimes they were willing to commit to further their secret crusade. I loved it when the show went beyond mere melodrama into full-on tragedy.
It was at it's best when it was small and personal... less about a world-threatening apocalypse... more about hanging around at night waiting for something... anything to happen. When it was about obsession and delusion as much as it was about monster hunting.
In my mind I want to mash it up with movies like 'Frailty' and 'Bellflower' and 'Snowtown'... though I'm not sure what the similarity is. 'The Witch Who Came From The Sea' is another. None of these is precisely a 'horror' movie... though all feature horrors of some sort. Maybe because all of them create a setting of almost surreal loneliness and despair... and link that with a sort of casual madness. There's nothing epic or supernatural about any of them... and I think my favorite moments of Supernatural shared that.
I guess it means I'm more interested in the sort of people who would go monster hunting, their lives... their slow corrosion... than I am about the monsters. All my favorite characters on Supernatural have been the freaks and weirdos existing on the fringes... at the bar where the hunters meet or in lonely shit-holes where they've retired to drink away what's left of their life.
It seems like, given my tastes here, that I'd have more interest in movies about drug addicts and their descents into personal hells... but for whatever reason I'm not... maybe because I don't see that as 'romantic' compared to the idea of becoming obsessed with trying to save the world or at least get some revenge.
I'd hate to think I'm just wanting to watch movies depicting poor/desperate/doomed characters and sudden bursts of violence. Then again, I do like reading Mickey Spillane and that's how many of his stories seem to play out.

I don't think I have a real point here... I'm just grasping at an aesthetic... narrow down what attracted me to keep watching the show... hoping I can find my way to a purer source of it and wondering if I'd really want to do that.

American Horror Story?!!!

I just finished watching the first season of this show on Netflix… and… my gawd! It had to be the most ridiculous, kitchen-sink, melodramatic soap opera I've ever seen.
It makes Dark Shadows look like Citizen Kane!
It's pretty much 90210 where half the cast are ghosts and the plots are written by throwing darts at a chart to see what random horror trope to cram in next.
By the end of the series they've shoveled in loads of teen angst, limp sex scenes, birth defects, burn victims, urban legends, ghost rape (and ghost spawn), a mad scientist, a high school massacre, crazed abortionists, the Black Dahlia, the Lindbergh baby kidnapping (pretty much), more adultery than you can shake a very shaky stick at… creepy annoying/mutant/annoying/disfigured kids galore… and to top off the overstuffed, underbaked cupcake… they tossed in the freakin' Antichrist!

What a load!
Usually I'm all for the Freakshow Buffet but this show does it so clumsily... it all just lies there like last week's macaroni salad. 

If Jessica Lange weren't in it I'd have never made it past the first episode.

I'd heard singing this show's praises... now I gotta wonder what they were watching.

Horror Pet Peeves

After spending the evening watching horror movies on Netflix streaming I'm in the mood to make a bitch list.
So here's a list of things that bug me in horror movies, or at least lessen my scares. Some of them are elements that otherwise make awful films enjoyable though.

1. Recognizable Stars
Any horror movie is automatically less scary if I recognize any of the actors in it. More deductions if I recognize them from something decidedly not-horror such as TV comedy or reality TV show. Paris Hilton in 'House Of Wax'? No comment on her acting but I just couldn't buy into her presence in the movie as anyone other than herself.
This isn't to say movies with known stars will suck, all the classic horror stars are a joy to watch... but Vincent Price never really scared me, except maybe that first time I saw him in 'The Abominable Dr. Phibes'. Also, there the occasional moment where a badly placed has-been 'star' will lend an extra dose of sadness to the proceedings and help with the general air of tragedy. This is why stuff like Night Gallery and those Amicus anthology movies are much less likely to give me frights... they're like the Love Boat of horror. I think that, for me, this has to do with wanting a large dose of mystery in horror movies... not Agatha Christie brand tales of murder, but the unknown... the strange and outre... the weird... and it's easier for me to buy into that with visual strangers.
Of course this doesn't apply if the actor is famous but I have no previous knowledge of them... such as the first time I watched 'The Haunting'.

2. Superfluous Sex
This makes me sound like a prude, but I just find that sex scenes let the air out of my horror tires faster than I can say 'Double Impalement'... and by that I mean sex scenes that seem obviously inserted in the movie just to add a titillation factor. The same for nudity that doesn't seem natural in context. It's just distracting and usually kind of insulting ('Hey, we know you horror geeks like topless women, so here are a bunch of them').
Of course this doesn't apply if the sex is somehow making an important point about the characters or setting up a specific mood for the horror to play off of... or if sex itself is a source of horror... as with 'Society', 'They Came From Within' and 'Possession'.
Add superfluous romance here as well. Just because there male and female characters does not mean they have to pair off... and characters shouldn't have to be in love to justify them caring about what happens to each other.
I guess all I'm saying is that I like horror films to remain focused on horror.

3. Good Lighting
By this I mean typical modern Hollywood lighting where deep shadows are banished and all the actors always have their faces evenly lit. Technically competent, artistically barren. Kind of like a Thomas Kinkade painting.
I think horror usually requires some element of mystery... and visually that means keeping some elements in shadows (and out of focus, or off screen altogether). This kind of ties in to why I generally think black and white works better for horror as well.
Again, exceptions to this are examples where the bright lighting was purposefully used to amp up the suggestion that the horrors were present even with the lights on... as in 'The Shining'.

4. Overzealous Soundtracks
In general I pretty much prefer movies to not have music. I don't need or want those audio clues telling me how I'm supposed to be reacting to whats on the screen. Having 'creepy music' play while a heroine is exploring an old dark house is one step above a laugh track. The same goes for those annoying 'scare sounds' when the cat jumps out of the laundry hamper or whatever. Taking out the non-diagetic sounds leaves the viewer without an emotional net... makes the experience more personal and amps up the investment.
That said, a well-placed bit of music or creepy sound effect can really push up the atmosphere or tension... but it's a spice not the whole meal.

5. Showing too much
I can't think of any horror film that I think would have been improved by showing more of the monster or more gore. Extra deductions if the FX or gore are obviously CGI.
I'm not queasy about gore but most of the time I'm solidly in the less-is-more camp. My favorite horrors tend to imply and suggest rather than paint the screen red.
Would 'The Haunting' have been scarier is there was some sort of Casper peering around the corners? Again, I think it's about maintaining that element of mystery. Showing the monster and having lots of violence/blood release the tension, they don't build it.
There are folks who hated 'The Blair Witch Project' for not showing some sort of spooky witch at the end... but I think that just would have been dumb.
Not to say that gore doesn't have its place. I think 'Night Of The Living Dead' absolutely needs those glimpses of zombies chowing down on human flesh. Just having some character describe that scene would not have sufficed. One it's shown though, that's enough for me... it's much more effective for me to imagine Barbra's being eaten alive by her brother on the front porch than to see it spelled out graphically.

6. Fan Service/Formula
Again, I think mystery is very important for setting up atmosphere and scares. The more a viewer is uncertain about what is coming the more on edge he's going to be. The innocent girl shouldn't be guaranteed survival, kids should not be off limits for horrible deaths, Pinhead should not show up in every 'Hellraiser' movie. 'Fans' might expect certain elements but usually those elements, used slavishly, will weaken the scares.
This includes all the 'homage' stuff and in-jokes and whatnots that are often included in films that otherwise don't have much going for them... I'm thinking movies like 'Cabin Fever' and 'Hatchet'. If I catch a movie self-consciously kissing the ass of 'horror fans' it just takes me right out of the mood.

7. Faux Gritty
By this I mean the attempt, more often in recent films, to hose down the set with filth and goo to somehow make it seem like a nasty place. Sometimes messy works, like with 'Seven' and 'The Texas Chainsaw Massacre' but often the dirt feels out of place or even silly... like the dirt itself is supposed to be scary. It isn't, unless it has some wider context. In 'The Texas Chainsaw Massacre' it's symbolic of the decadent mental chaos of the Sawyer family. A lot of the time it feels like the set designer is has no real motive behind it except a simplistic dirt = bad... and also, I'm guessing, ultra-dirty is a whole lot easier than ultra-clean. Either way, if the grit seems artificial or pointless then I find it distracting.

8. Blandly Attractive Underwear Models
Movies are more likely to affect me if I can relate to the characters and the actors playing them. If all the actors are 20-somethings who are carefully groomed and exercised... no big noses or goofy teeth... I'm not going to find much common ground with them. They don't look or dress or act like anyone I know. Some of that is bad writing and wardrobe... but it's really the endless parade of attractive yet uninteresting faces that disrupt my horror immersion. At least have some variety of age and personal hygiene... and that doesn't mean just dropping in one comedy fat kid who get's butchered on his way to a late night snack.
This prejudice also covers characters who live in improbably and pointlessly palacial houses or drive bright and shiny brand new cars despite being 20-somethings and having no visual means of support.

9. Dream/Nightmare Narratives
Most of the time dreams and nightmares in horror movies seem like just an excuse to throw a lot of FX up on the screen without bothering to think them through... so it's worse when the entire movie is a dream/nightmare.
I'm thinking stuff like 'Jacob's Ladder'... which I liked. But for every one that works there are a shed load of lesser makes that are just big visual acid trips with no rhyme or reason beyond "he's dead and this is all taking place in hell" or "it's all just dream"... an excuse for wacky visual and no real theme or plot. Without some sort of solid ground to stand on it all becomes ethereal and I just won't give a crap what happens because 5 minutes later the guy's dog will be alive again or his wife won't have those bat-wings or whatever. I'm not even sure why 'Jacob's Ladder' doesn't fail for me here... but somehow it doesn't. Maybe because it reigns in the crazy and keeps it focused, it feels like there is firm reality in there somewhere... unlike something like 'The Cell' that just goes for broke on visual nonsense that has no real coherent symbolism or relevance.

10. Pulling Punches
I want my horrors to be... horrible. I need to know that no character has a free pass to the end credits and that when the nasty stuff happens it will indeed be nasty. This necessarily mean showing more gore, like I said earlier I'm a 'less is more' type of guy.
I'm not talking about dropping squirming babies into wood chippers... unless the movie is called 'Maternity Ward Woodchipper Massacre'... in which case some babies better get mulched.
I'm also not saying that all my horrors need to be bleak and/or shocking. I'm fine if no characters at all are killed... as long as it doesn't feel like the story was cheated.
Mostly I'm thinking of films that hype themselves with garish and gruesome titles or setups... that upon viewing pull a bait-n-switch and go all sorts of nowhere with that initial promise. 'Hostel' my usual poster-child for this.
Eli Roth's yammering, the posters, the hype for it... all pumped up how transgressive and extreme 'Hostel' would be... but it turned out to be pretty damn mild... especially compared to stuff like 'Inside', 'Martyrs' and 'A Serbian Film'. Even 'The Human Centipede' has a more horrific imagination going for it, despite not really showing much of anything. 'Hostel', to me, felt like it backed out of its chosen rabbit hole rather than following it all the way down to wherever it led.
I understand that there are marketing concerns... that a fair number of people like happy endings and don't want to see anything too depressing or awful. They want the little kids and the fairy princess to make it to the end of the movie. That's fine. I'm just saying that if you are going to make something with that audience in mind don't call it 'Blood Orgy Of The Flesh-Eating Necrophiles'.

And... a pet peeve for all movies of whatever sort:
11. Fake Eating
I get so annoyed watching actors use gimmicky little techniques to pretend they're eating food when they obviously are not. I'm not sure why it bugs me so much but it does.
Either they're pushing the food around their plate on a road to nowhere or they're sleight of hand tossing invisible bits into their mouths and mock-chewing them. Everyone has seen what REAL eating looks like... so stop it with this nonsense. Either put the table chat scene post dinner or have the actors actually putting food in their mouths and actually chewing it... put a bucket on the floor next to the ones who don't want to swallow.

Dark Shadows (2012)

A quick note to try to get me up and moving on this blogging thing... My friend and I (and her young children) went out to see Dark Shadows last night. Unlike her I'd seen the original show and movies and liked them... and I have a continuing dislike of Tim Burton as somewhat of a one trick (Edward Gorey) pony. So I wasn't really expecting to like it but I was in the mood for gleaning whatever bits of goodness I could from it. So, with that preamble... yeah, I thought it was a mess. But I had fun anyway. It's not nearly the whacky spoof people/ads have made it out to be. The comedy bits kind of fade in and out and there aren't many of them. Some scenes are funny-ish... others are played straight. The whole movie is kind of odd that way... the individual scenes work fine, mostly... but together they seem mismatched. Oddly, it also it has something of a gothic pace to it... slow and kind of chatty... up until the big dorky fight at the end. Also, what's up with the daughter character... every scene with her felt like an infomercial for the actress... Chloe somebody. Still, I kind of enjoyed the movie... but not for the reasons folks usually enjoy movies. I liked all the touches to evoke the 70s... the clothes, the music, the cars, etc. It did remind me a lot of the original series... in a kind of twisted/backwards way. If I were a bigger fan of the original I'd probably hate it, but as it is it did bring out a good bit of the flavor I remember. It's not disrespectful of its source, just confused, misguided... poorly conceived. I wish they'd either played it straight or spoofed it up a LOT more than they did... as it is it sits on an uncomfortable fence the leaves it as a curiosity, and that's all.