31 Nights of Halloween Horror

Congratulations!  We've made it.  31 film in 31 days.  Here is a run down of what we watched: 1. The Devil's Candy 2. Cannibal Ferox aka Make Them Die Slowly 3. The Revenge of Frankenstein 4. Tentacles 5. Butcher, Baker, Nightmare Maker 6. The Innkeepers 7. Dream Home 8. The Hatred 9. Francesca 10. Mardi Gras Massacre 11. Mill of the Stone Women 12. The House at the End of Time 13. Don't Hang Up 14. Prevenge 15. Funny Games 16. The Ruins 17. Graduation Day 18. Evil 19. Rogue 20. Leatherface 21. Zombies: The Beginning 22. Raw 23. Pyscho II 24. The Blackcoat's Daughter 25. Mary, Mary, Bloody Mary 26. The Monster 27. Evil Ed 28. Train to Busan 29. Willow Creek 30. The Uninvited 31. The Car. Of these 31 films, I have only seen three of them before.  So that is a pretty good run of watching some new movies I have never seen.  It was great discovering something fresh and new and I found some new favorites.  I tried to get a p...

The Uninvited 99 mins. Dir. Lewis Allen 1944/USA Tonight we are going back to a classic black and white ghost story story called The Uninvited.  It tells the tale of a brother and sister who purchase an old house by the sea that may already a have a couple residents living in it of the supernatural nature. Roderick and Pamela Fitzgerald stumble a cross an old empty house on the edge of a cliff looking over the sea in England.  Pamela instantly falls in love with the place and convinces her brother Roderick they should purchase it.  Why a brother and sister in their 30s feel the need to purchase a house to live in together makes little sense, but it was the 40s, so I have to assume things were different back then.  They locate the owner of the estate and first meet his granddaughter Stella, who tries to brush them off by saying the house is not for sale, but her grandfather quickly corrects her and sells it to them cheap.  Turns out it was his daug...

Willow Creek 80 mins. Dir. Bobcat Goldthwait 2013/USA I love Bigfoot movies.  I am completely over found footage movies.  I have always been a fan of Bobcat Goldthwait, his comedy and his movies.  Let's go camping deep in the woods of Six Rivers National Forest in Northern California and see happens when you combine these three elements. Less is more with Willow Creek.  If you liked Blair Witch Project, you will like this movie.  If you hated Blair Witch Project you will hate this movie.  Not because of the shaky cam and running, but because there is nothing to see.  What is more scary then the fear of the unknown?  I loved Blair Witch Project and Willow Creek is similar in the sense that a documentary is being made, a bunch of town locals are being interviewed in the beginning, we go camping, we see nothing, but we hear enough that we know we should get the fuck out of there.  And while it is hard to not compare this movie to B...

Train to Busan 118 mins. Dir. Sang-ho Yeon 2016/South Korea Take one train, add in some 28 Days Later, buy a ticket for World War Z and save a seat for Snowpiercer and you have what resembles Train to Busan, but is better then all those films mentioned.  It has been all the rage since it was released last year.  I finally sat down to watch it and if you have been putting it off, I highly recommend you don't any longer.  This one does not disappoint. Not zombies in the traditional sense that they are rotted corpses of the deceased hungry for your flesh.  It is more of a viral infection like 28 Days Later, that comes on fast and is transferred by a bite, so they do want to eat you.  And they are fast, fast like World War Z zombies where they just run over each other and let nothing get in there way.  But it is not a copy of either of these movies.  It still manages to add some new ideas and above all actually has characters you can care abou...

Evil Ed 93 mins. Dir. Anders Jacobsson 1995/Sweden Evil Ed is a gore drenched black comedy of a film satirizing the Swedish film board and how they censored blood and nudity in Europe from 1911 until 1996. Ed, before he becomes evil, works for a film company called European Distribution.  He spends his days editing boring ass black and white art films.  When the Splatter and Gore department of European Dist. purchases all eight of the film series Loose Limbs, they require Ed's assistance in editing out all the gore and sex scenes in the film, which there is a lot of.  Producer Sam Campbell, a nod to Evil Dead's Sam Raimi and Bruce Campbell, which there are a few of in this movie, including the title, sets Ed up in a house that we can work by himself. Ed begins editing the films and as we watch the scenes he is cutting he soon begins to hallucinate thinking he is seeing scenes of gore and sex in every day life.  Eventually all the onscreen violence tak...

The Monster 91 mins. Dir. Bryan Bertino 2016/USA There are two ways to look at this movie.  Want an solid simple good old fashioned Monster movie? Then The Monster is about a mother and daughter stranded on the side of a road one night while a monster lurks outside threatening them.  Want something a little more?  Then The Monster is about an addict of a mother who is negligent of her old beyond her years daughter.  On their way to drop her off at her fathers, they get in an accident and discover there is a monster outside lurking.  The Mother must fight off her inner monster as well as the physical one outside to protect herself and her daughter.  The truth of the matter is, The Monster is both of these things. The movie open with 10-11 year oldish Lizzy cleaning up beer bottles and emptying ash trays in her living room, obviously from a bender that went on last night.  From there she goes to try and wake up her young mother Kathy, who is...

Mary, Mary, Bloody Mary 101 mins. Dir. Juan Lopez Moctezuma 1975/Mexico One of my favorite urban legends growing up was that of Bloody Mary.  As I was told, stand in a bathroom and spin around three times and say Bloody Mary each time and then turn on the lights and you will see her in the mirror all bloody and terrifying.  Scary stuff.  This movie has nothing to do with the Bloody Mary legend. This film is about Mary played by the lovely Christina Ferrare, an American artist living in Mexico selling her paintings.  There she meets another American who is hitchhiking his way through Mexico, so they hook up.  One other thing though, Mary needs to drink blood to survive.  Is she a vampire?  Not necessarily, she is out in the sunlight, and I am sure crosses and garlic have no effect on her.  Nothing in the conventional vampire sense, she just likes lapping up the red stuff.  Fair enough, so Mary goes around seducing people and stick...

The Blackcoat's Daughter 93 mins. Dir. Oz Perkins 2015/Canada In keeping with yesterday's Psycho II, tonight's movie is directed by Norman Bates' son Oz Perkins, most notable for his acting, but here has his directorial debut with The Blackcoat's Daughter. To say The Blackcoat's Daughter is a slow burn is an understatement.  It's a nonlinear demonic possession film, but unlike most you have ever seen.  The story revolves around two girls at a Catholic boarding school during winter break.  Kat's parents have yet to show up to pick her up and Rose intentionally told her parents the wrong date so she could spend time with her boyfriend who recently got her pregnant.  Rose and Kat stay at the boarding school for another week while they wait for their parents to show up along with two other nuns.  Meanwhile a side story is happening with Joan who appears to have escaped from a hospital and gets a lift at a bus stop by a husband and wife heading...

Psycho II 113 mins. Dir. Richard Franklin 1983/USA We all know the classic Psycho, an untouchable movie forever branded in our brain and heralded for creating modern horror and taking it out of gothic castles with monsters and putting right in our own backyard and making normal looking people the real monsters.  Plenty of books have been written about the movie, we don't need to get into it here.  But do you remember Psycho II?  Believe it or not it is a pretty decent movie and is better then it has any right to be.  Tonight we are checking into Room 1 of the Bates Motel as we revisit the underrated classic, Psycho II. The film starts off with a reshowing of the infamous shower scene from the original Psycho.  I feel like it almost cheapens the movie by doing this.  It's as if it is saying, here is one of the most memorable scenes in all of cinematic history, even if you never saw Psycho you know this scene.  It is summing up this entire...

Raw 99 mins. Dir. Julia Ducournau 2016/France Raw is more a coming of age film then a horror film, though coming of age via cannibalism, and that is going to be what appeals most to us horror fans.  Raw joins that new wave of slow burn horror, so if you are expecting people to be disemboweled and organs to be consumed with quick cuts and tense action scenes you will be disappointed. Instead what you are going to get is the story of Justine, a strict vegetarian who is entering her freshman year in a veterinarian college that has a surreal and intense hazing ritual.  Justine doesn't have many friends at school, only her gay roommate and her older sister Alex who doesn't seem to cut her any slack during the belittlement of the rookies by older classmates as seen in the scene where Justine is made to eat a raw rabbit kidney.  She tries to tell them she is a vegetarian, and asks for her sister to confirm as Alex was also brought up as a strict non-meat eater, but...

Zombies: The Beginning 90 mins. Dir. Bruno Mattei 2007/Italy This one is for all my friends who revel in Italian zombie gut munchers.  Everyone else should steer clear.  Despite how crazy the description may sound, trust me this is like the backwash in a jar of gravy as opposed to your grandma's homemade sauce. To know Bruno Mattei's films, is to love Bruno Mattei's films.  The man has made over 50 movies starting in 1970 and ending in 2007, with this his final film before his death.  He has touched upon just about every subject including nazisploitation, nunsploitation, zombies, women in prison, crime, he even is the man responsible for making Cruel Jaws. And if you know Bruno's movies, you know sometimes or most of the time, he is maybe not the most original man out there and has been known to ride the coat tails of other movies.  But despite his flaws, he has given us such classics as Zombie 3, Rats: Nights of Terror, Hell of the Living Dead, Wo...

Leatherface 90 mins Dir. Alexandre Bustillo and Julien Maury 2017/USA The Texas Chainsaw Massacre.   Easily one of the greatest horror films ever made.   It has spawned eight other installments all chasing the impact of the original and all failing.   Now before you say, “Aw Damien, I liked Texas Chainsaw 2.”   I liked it also, but if you are looking at it as a sequel to the original, it fails.   Where the original is gritty, unpleasant, hot, dirty and unnerving, the sequel is brightly colored, fun and humorous.   Totally opposite feel.   Kind of like Evil Dead 2 is to Evil Dead.   “Aw Damien, I liked Evil Dead 2.”   I liked it as well, but compared to Evil Dead again it lacks the gritty, unpleasant dirty unnerving feel and replaces it with humor. So anyway Leatherface, where does this fall into the mix?   Not to be confused with Leatherface Texas Chainsaw III, which was a sequel?   Re-imagining? Either way ...