2020 Halloween Challenge

Tools    





I can't even explain my joy/confusion when that dance sequence went on for what felt like a solid 3-4 minutes.

I'm pretty sure it goes on waaay longer than that.


The song plays for at least a third of the movie.





Attack of the Crab Monsters, 1957 (A creature Feature 30s-50s)

Like a fool, I thought that this film was just going to be about some giant crab monsters attacking people. How wrong I was!!

Where do I even begin? I almost want to encourage people to go into this film knowing as little as possible about the wonders it holds.

1) The crab speaks, psychically. You see, the crab absorbs the brains of the people it eats, thus absorbing their intelligence and personality.

2) How do the crabs speak, you ask. Why, they project human voices psychically through anything made of metal! (Best line, in my opinion, "Hearken to all things metal, for I may be in them!"). This of course leads to the main cast having tense conversations with random metal objects.

3) The attempt to make regular crabs scary. In one sequence, a radio is strategically destroyed. "Whatever it was got carefully inside and cut these wires in half!". The camera pans to . . . the most benign looking little crab just sitting on a shelf.

4) The crabs look like grumpy old men.

5) This isn't snarky at all: I love underwater photography, especially the old-timey black and white variety.

Seriously highly recommended.






Attack of the Crab Monsters, 1957 (A creature Feature 30s-50s)

Like a fool, I thought that this film was just going to be about some giant crab monsters attacking people. How wrong I was!!

Where do I even begin? I almost want to encourage people to go into this film knowing as little as possible about the wonders it holds.

1) The crab speaks, psychically. You see, the crab absorbs the brains of the people it eats, thus absorbing their intelligence and personality.

2) How do the crabs speak, you ask. Why, they project human voices psychically through anything made of metal! (Best line, in my opinion, "Hearken to all things metal, for I may be in them!"). This of course leads to the main cast having tense conversations with random metal objects.

3) The attempt to make regular crabs scary. In one sequence, a radio is strategically destroyed. "Whatever it was got carefully inside and cut these wires in half!". The camera pans to . . . the most benign looking little crab just sitting on a shelf.

4) The crabs look like grumpy old men.

5) This isn't snarky at all: I love underwater photography, especially the old-timey black and white variety.

Seriously highly recommended.


On my list!



I'm pretty sure it goes on waaay longer than that.


The song plays for at least a third of the movie.
I think, in all seriousness, there was more dancing than slashing, by a pretty big margin.



Victim of The Night


Attack of the Crab Monsters, 1957 (A creature Feature 30s-50s)

Like a fool, I thought that this film was just going to be about some giant crab monsters attacking people. How wrong I was!!

Where do I even begin? I almost want to encourage people to go into this film knowing as little as possible about the wonders it holds.

1) The crab speaks, psychically. You see, the crab absorbs the brains of the people it eats, thus absorbing their intelligence and personality.

2) How do the crabs speak, you ask. Why, they project human voices psychically through anything made of metal! (Best line, in my opinion, "Hearken to all things metal, for I may be in them!"). This of course leads to the main cast having tense conversations with random metal objects.

3) The attempt to make regular crabs scary. In one sequence, a radio is strategically destroyed. "Whatever it was got carefully inside and cut these wires in half!". The camera pans to . . . the most benign looking little crab just sitting on a shelf.

4) The crabs look like grumpy old men.

5) This isn't snarky at all: I love underwater photography, especially the old-timey black and white variety.

Seriously highly recommended.

I have strong joy feelings right now. Always knew you had taste.



I have strong joy feelings right now. Always knew you had taste.
So you have wounded me. I must grow a new claw. Well and good, for I can do it in a day. But will you grow new lives when I have taken yours from you?!



Pit and the Pendulum

Corman, 1961





I got this viewing in over the weekend to fill in my Poe slot, and I am glad I did. Price is always fun to watch, and this was no exception. I did get a few chuckles out of seeing the cobwebs, which someone had japed about earlier in the thread, but overall, I really liked the set design and tone of the film.


Also, even though I had already filled my Lovecraft slot, I also watched...

From Beyond

Gordon, 1986





I will go ahead and fill this in under the 80s/90s sex thriller, even though it might be kind of a stretch as far as eligibility. Then again, Barbara Crampton's character does transform from a totally believable expert in her medical field () to an S&M dominatrix, so maybe it is a good fit. I, for one, totally bought Crampton as some sort of nerdy PhD wielding bookworm, so it was a complete shock when he strapped on the leather and went to town on a bald invalid. Wait a second... /sarcasm

Anyway, a couple of gems over the weekend, and now I will need to try to fit in whatever I can during the upcoming week, as I have a lot of catching up to do.

Did you do a Lovecraft one because From Beyond is often considered a Lovecraftian story.



LOL, cruising around for Poe adaptations, and stumbled on this slightly hysterical line from a review of a House of Usher film:

there was too much scenes with men in their underwear that were completely UNNECESSARY!
Oh, heavens!





1922, 2017 (A Stephen King adaptation)

I'm going to damn this one with faint praise and say . . . it's fine.

In the year 1922, a farmer named Wilfred James (Thomas Jane) is in a crumbled marriage with his wife (Molly Parker) who wants to sell off their land (HER land) and move away with the couple's son. Wanting to keep the farm and his son, the farmer hatches a plan to murder his wife--winning the son over as an accomplice. But once the deed is done, things go rapidly downhill.

Jane is good in the central role as a man who just keeps digging himself deeper and deeper. Molly Parker is only in the film for the first act, but she does a great job of playing a woman who is crude and not necessarily kind, but also . . . she's not wrong about anything she says. The character of the son was the only real misfire for me. Teenagers can be moody and mercurial, but Henry comes across as too obnoxious and whiny to be all that sympathetic.

I also felt myself getting worn down by the amount of animal death/suffering/cruelty. It's part of this concept of what it means to destroy a person (and usually a male character) by taking away everything he owns/loves. The problem I have is that the film frames so much of this in terms of how it impacts James. It is not their suffering that is centered, but rather the toll it takes on HIM. At a certain point I was like "JUST LEAVE THE COWS ALONE!!!!"

There's just not enough of a compelling character arc within the story. Things just . . . keep getting worse. And the horror aspect (rats that emerge from every possible pipe or crack, for example) wasn't quite impactful enough to make a strong impression.

I've seen two other King adaptations semi-recently (Gerald's Game and Doctor Sleep), and this was the least effective of them.

I haven't read the novel on which it is based, so I can't say to what degree it's a source material issue or an adaptation issue or some mix of the two.





Attack of the Crab Monsters, 1957 (A creature Feature 30s-50s)
Seriously highly recommended.

A fav of mine, you gotta love Roger Corman the king of B movies. He might not have the highest production values, but, man oh man does he pack in some tasty extras that gives a Corman flick that something extra. In this case the very cool idea of those mind absorbing, telepathic crabs. I reviewed that shortly after joining MoFo. Glad to see it get some appreciation.
https://www.movieforums.com/communit...78#post1598678



A. Source Material
1. A Stephen King Adaptation
2. An Edgar Allen Poe Adaptation
Spirits of the Dead (1968)

3. An HP Lovecraft Adaptation

B. Language of Origin
4. A Spanish Language horror film
5. A French Language horror film
Climax (2018)

6. An Asian Language horror film
7. An Eastern European/Slavic Language horror film
Werckmeister Harmonies(2000)


C. Time Period
8. A Classic Creature Feature (30's-50's)
The Curse of Frankenstein(1957)
9. A Gothic Horror Tale (40's-60's)
The Ghost and Mrs Muir(1947)
10. The B-List Killer/Slasher (70's-80's)
Silent Scream(1979)
11. A Sex Thriller (80's-90's)
Body Double (1984)

12. A Revival/Remake/Throwback (00's-10's)

D. The Players(Actors/Actresses/Directors/Producers)
13. A Brian De Palma/William Castle/Wes Craven film
Phantom of the Paradise(1974)
14. A Linnea Quigley/Jamie Lee Curtis/Barbara Steele film
Black Sunday (1960)
15. A Peter Cushing/Vincent Price/Christopher Lee film
The Revenge of Frankenstein (1958)
16. A Lucio Fulci/Dario Argento/Mario Bava film
17. A Alfred Hitchcock/Terence Fisher/Christopher Smith film
Frankenstein Must be Destroyed(1969)
18. An A24/Blumhouse/Roger Corman/Hammer/Universal film




E. Distributor
19. A Rotten Horror Film from Rotten Tomatoes
The Evil of Frankenstein(1964)
20. A Fresh Horror Film from Rotten Tomatoes
21. A Horror Film on Shudder
22. A Horror Film on Hulu
Frankenstein and the Monster from Hell(1974)
23. A Horror Film on Amazon
The Vast of Night(2019)
24. A Horror Film on Netflix
25. A Horror Film from 2020
Swallow (2020)


F. Genre
26. A Werewolf Film
27. A Vampire Film
28. A Ghost/Haunted House Film
29. A Witchcraft/Satanic Film
30. A Frankenstein's Monster Film
Frankenstein Created Woman(1967)
31. A Zombie Film



So sitting down I realize I have to move some sections around for me to be able to watch the horror films I want to watch and cover the sections



A fav of mine, you gotta love Roger Corman the king of B movies. He might not have the highest production values, but, man oh man does he pack in some tasty extras that gives a Corman flick that something extra. In this case the very cool idea of those mind absorbing, telepathic crabs. I reviewed that shortly after joining MoFo. Glad to see it get some appreciation.
https://www.movieforums.com/communit...78#post1598678
I just wish the first 20 or so minutes were a little less bland.





October 17th - A Vampire Film

Vampire Circus(1972) is one of the later entries of the Hammer franchise. Normally when a studio is going under you expect lesser quality work but I was impressed with this one. The plot is pretty cool...basically a town kills it's Dracula (it's not dracula) and 15 years later a circus comes to town. This is huge for the town as they've been quarantined due to a plague.



What I like about this film is you can side with the townspeople or the Vampires its a pretty cool idea. The FX are solid for the time and the production design is great. This Forrest town feels very different from the other Hammer films I've watched. If the film has a flaw it's that none of the characters really stand out they are more shallow ideas than actual people.









October 18th - A Werewolf film


I have to make a confession I despise werewolf films, I couldn't put together a top ten list even if I tried. So you can imagine my surprise when I watched I was a Teenage Werewolf (1957). What makes this so good is that you think it's going to be a slight 50's cheap sci-fi film but it's really more about growing up and dealing with pain. Michael Landon is an angry young man who gets into a fight. Most film would just treat this as a plot point and move on but Teenage Werewolf actually dives into the results of the fight, the police show up, the boys' girlfriend's father hears about it...he ends up needing to see a therapist. How many films actually go through all of those steps?



The Werewolf metaphor is handled so well in this, anger sexuality and fear all play huge roles in the second half of the film. With a final act that is actually very thrilling.







October 19th - A Zombie Film


One Cut of the Dead(2017) is currently sitting at 100% on RT....I think it's more for it's one take 40 minute opening than for the second half which is something different. Some people are going to watch this and end up really dissapointed in the end result but I enjoyed myself. IT was more fun than you would expect it to be even though I didn't really care about any of the people involved in the film.


The basic plot is that a crazy director leads his crew out into the woods to make a Zombie film where something goes wrong and real Zombies show up and take out everyone.



I would be very cautious with this one if you want a horror film and not end up catfished.





A system of cells interlinked
Did you do a Lovecraft one because From Beyond is often considered a Lovecraftian story.

Yes, I already have Color Out of Space on that slot.







October 20th - A Spanish Language horror film

The Orphanage is one of those films that you likely need to watch a couple times to follow the plot. It's nice to have a complicated ghost story every once and a while. The plot is the story of a young girl who is adopted and returns to her orphanage to raise new children. She has a son and on the day of the opening an event happens and sets the story into motion.


I'm not going to give away the second act twist because the first act drags on forever and talking about what the story is actually about would be a pain in the butt. Certain aspects of the story could have been done better we get a lot of tell but not show especially for several major plot points that would have elevated the horror aspect of the story. This is a very soft R horror film...I would call it a PG-13.





Victim of The Night


October 17th - A Vampire Film

Vampire Circus(1972) is one of the later entries of the Hammer franchise. Normally when a studio is going under you expect lesser quality work but I was impressed with this one. The plot is pretty cool...basically a town kills it's Dracula (it's not dracula) and 15 years later a circus comes to town. This is huge for the town as they've been quarantined due to a plague.



What I like about this film is you can side with the townspeople or the Vampires its a pretty cool idea. The FX are solid for the time and the production design is great. This Forrest town feels very different from the other Hammer films I've watched. If the film has a flaw it's that none of the characters really stand out they are more shallow ideas than actual people.


Woot!
Thrilled you watched it, thrilled you appreciated it.