31 (or more) days of Quarantine Halloween

March 31st - Day 13 - Color out of Space(2019) - Richard Stanley


This movie was bonkers...in all the right ways. An isolated yuppie family is terrorized by a meteor in Richard Stanley's first film in 25 years. I wasn't a big fan of Hardware and I thought Island of Doctor Moreau was an abomination so I came into the film with low expectations and I found myself presently surprised. This is a film that's basically two films, the first half is creepiness and atmospheric horror and then the second half just pure body horror madness. I thought it worked really well they managed to make a recording scene with Tommy Chong just as creepy as a scene takin straight from The Thing. I ended up watching this in 4K which I highly recommend. The biggest problem was Nick Cage went over the top a little too much but Cage isn't really the main actor in this film.

April 1st - Day 14 - Poltergeist II -Brian Gibson


People love to bring up The Exorcist II as the worst sequel ever made to a horror film...and while Exorcist II is bad I don't think any are as disappointing and wasteful as Poltergeist II. It's got good visuals and a fantastic villain but the plot is all over the place as is the tone. I do wonder if Poltergeist should get the Halloween treatment and get a reboot and reset and try and rework the concept.

April 2nd - Day 15 - The Whisperer in the Dark (2011) Sean Branney


The HP Lovecraft society came together and made this 1930's throwback adaptation of a Lovecraft short story. This movie was brilliant using affected no name actors and mixing classic FX with modern FX made this movie so good. I strongly recommend tracking this one down. This might be one of my favorite cult films I've ever seen it reminded me of The Lighthouse except it told the story without the limitations of just being on an island.

Man... You guys are still stuck on the A side of the cassette. Play the the B side!

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My Favorite Films

April 3rd - Day 16 - Tower of Evil (1972) - Jim O'Connolly


Tower of Evil is the story of a group of people heading to a Lighthouse where a group of teenagers have been slaughtered. This movie reminded me of a mix of Roger Corman film and Friday the 13th. It has a great setting and that setting does wonders for killing off the characters. The issue with the film is it's got the gloss of a great movie but it's not the best cohesive story. The reveal isn't that great and the filmmaker doesn't seem to understand how suspense works.

April 4th - Day 17 - The Howling (1981) - Joe Dante

I don't know why it's so hard to make a good werewolf film, perhaps it's the mythology that limits the type of story you can tell. I think the mystery is the best approach to the genre and that's the second act of The Howling...likely the best part. My biggest problem though with The Howling is that often times it felt like parts of the story were missing. Spoilers but all the townspeople are werewolfs...do we care not really. My other big issue with the film is that the FX look really good at some points and really bad at other points.

This and their other feature film, The Call of Cthulhu, are perhaps the best two Lovecraft filmings ever done.

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April 5th - Day 18 - Possession(1981) - ‎Andrzej Korzyński


Y'know this is one of those films I'm not sure how I feel about it. As a Lovecraftian film it works really well though I hated how the film was shot. This is one of those films were you see the directors influences...Bergman, Cassavettes, and Roeg I feel like he steals from all of them. But I loved the gruesomeness and weirdness of all the characters in the story.

April 6th - Day 19 - A Hole in the Ground (2019) - Lee Cronin

This film got really good reviews and I have to say I was underwhelmed. This is very similar to The Babadook mother and son stuck in a house with strange happenings occur. The story has a bit more of a budget but it's certainly lacking when it comes to scares. I also didn't quite get the physics of the film which is a problem for the entire third act.

April 7th - Day 20 - The Lost (2006) - Chris Sivertson


Ketchem's work has always impressed me...this is a bad movie where the story is so good it's elevated above it's limits. This is a serial killer film where the film is 90% serial killer build and it works...it looks really good today where toxic masculinity and entitlement have become a major theme in society and media. Ketchum understands narcissism and while the story is based on a true story it's taken from the 60's and told in the 00's which adds onto the weirdness of the tale.

April 8th - Day 21 - The Haunting (1963) - Robert Wise

This might be one of the few films that seems to get shorter each time you watch it. I didn't like The Haunting when I saw it in High School it just didn't have enough thrills to me. The film didn't have a lot of steak it was mostly sizzle though years later I learned to value it's short comings a bit more. Julie Harris is very good in this one and on the rare occasion the voiceover works. What I like about her is that she's an unreliable narrator what I don't like is I feel like a certain aspect of the film shouldn't have been explained at the end of the film. It's a good film and it's growing on me.

April 9th - Day 22 - Burnt Offerings(1977) - Dan Curtis

Yeah this one didn't hold up on re-watch. Burnt Offerings is the story of a family set to renovate a home and they slowly go mad. A number of the scary elements of the film just strike me as silly today and the twist was well pretty good but often times the characters didn't make much sense. This was to me like a first draft almost toothless version of the Shining until the last act when it gets really good.

April 10th - Day 23 - Incident in a Ghostland (2018) - Pascal Langier


This film received some pretty good reviews so I decided to give it a shot. It opens with a pair of sisters and their mother attacked by a pair of crazy people. Years later one of the surviving sisters becomes a Stephen King type author and gets a call to come back to the home from her sister. The writer is going for a Lovecraftian story and Lovecraft is a character in the film but it misses the mark by not building towards the important plot points. The horror is more in line with french extremism than the gothic body horror of Lovecraft. The film also wants to be a feminist film but it pulls back at several points. If you are going to do a rape revenge film...you can't just sort of imply the rape happens.

April 11th - Day 24 - Burn Witch Burn(1962) - Sidney Hayers


Well the movie has a promising premise, a professor finds out his wife is practicing witchcraft. Finding out about this he decides that his wife is being silly and makes her destroy all of her witchcraft. Upon doing this strange things start happening and he's left to question if his wife really is a witch.


The film sadly takes a right turn and it's not for the better. It's somewhat unfortunate because the ideas and execution are their but the resolution and third act go on forever.

April 12th - Day 25 - The Thirteenth Chair (1937) - George B Seitz


This was a play adaptation from the 30's starring Dame Mae Whitty as a medium sent in to investigate a murder. Whitty actually became quite popular in Hollywood before her death, she got an Oscar nomination and popped up in The Lady Vanishes, Mrs Miniver, Night Must Fall, Suspcion and Gaslight. This is her starring performance as she works against a hard nosed detective to work through the guests to find the killer. Once again we get some quasi-supernatural elements though this felt more effective and toughtout than Burn Witch Burn.

April 13th - Day 26 - Harpoon (2019) -Rob Grant


For some reason this film is 96% on Rotten Tomatoes, Metacritic has it at 63% this is really more of a 40% horror film. This is one of those cheap indie horrors, it has a micro cast of three people stuck on a boat where secrets are revealed and murder is afoot. Of-course with three people the deaths forever but it's given a humorous American Psycho narration and it's shot creatively. End of the day I didn't care for it, it could have used more money and told some stories through flashbacks to increase the horror and keep me from being bored.

April 14th - Day 27 - Ghost Town(1987) - Richard Glovener


I always passed on this one at the video store for a reason...look at that cover. Anyways it's the story of a modern day lawman sent back in time to a cursed town in the old west. And for a time waster...it's fine It's got a nice large cast and the FX aren't really all that bad.



The big problem with the film is the big bad does a terrible Eastwood impression which took me out of the film. But it's not a bad little B-movie worth tracking down.

April 15th - Day 28 - Annihilation (2018) - Alex Garland




This was a rewatch for me, Garland's films are very good but they do seem to drag. Annihilation is the story of a biologist, physicist, geomorphist, and a paramedic who head into an area called "The Shimmer". This is basically Lovecraftian horror at it's best the group is disposed of (could have been in a more appealing way) and we get the big showdown. Natalie Portman is very good in this though she could have done more when it came to the performance. The star of the film though is Rob Hardy's cinematography, every set piece in this story is remarkable from the use of animals to plant life to the CGI visuals the film just nails everything.

April 16th - Day 29 - Call of Cthulhu (2005) - Andre Lehman


Y'know for an indie film that's less than an hour this was pretty damn good. It's a modern silent film inspired by German Expressionism. And it's the story of a Boston Anthropologist who goes on a search for a Cthulhu cult. Their isn't that much to say about it, the story very closely mirrors the first half of King Kong with a group of character actors running around an island. I don't really have much to say about it that wouldn't just be a regurgitation of the plot so in other words I wish this was more of a feature length film.

April 17th - Day 30 - Cast a Deadly Spell (1991) - Martin Campbell


This is a Lovecraft period piece directed by the guy who did Casino Royale and staring Fred Ward, Julianne Moore, and Clancy Brown. The basic premise is that in an alternate 1948 Los Angeles witches, demons, gremlins and all sorts of mystical things now exist. The detective Lovecraft goes on a quest to find the necromonicon...in a lot of ways this feels like a TV pilot where perhaps they would do several of these TV movies for HBO but I don't know if that's the truth. I'll say this...great special effects for the era everything is practical and they don't shy away from the bigger set pieces. This film might actually make my top 25 noir list.