Halfway To Halloween

Tools    





Victim of The Night
Wooley has gone on vacation to Northern California.
Please forgive the absence.
If I outlast everybody tonight, I'll watch something and get a write-up in.
Probably I will extend this into early May.



Victim of The Night

Well, I definitely won't say I wasn't entertained.
I have no idea what made me decide to watch Ebira! Horror Of The Deep. But, honestly, once I saw that giant claw come up from under the waves and toss a boat around, I was all in.
Little did I know that, in no time at all, this movie would involve a psychic, a dance contest, a safecracker, a secret island with a diabolical secret army, ****ing Mothra (!), and then, oh sure, why not just throw The Big Guy, Godzilla himself in for good measure?
And the plot is just too much fun. A guy goes missing in the South Pacific, his family consults a psychic who says he's not dead, his brother goes to a dance contest where the prize is a boat (to search for his brother), he leaves with the losers of the contest and they trespass on a boat whose owner let's them stay the night... but turns out to be a wanted safecracker. The brother sets sail while they sleep and they find themselves in the middle of the South Pacific, where Ebirah (Horror of the Deep!) attacks and destroys their boat, marooning them on an island... which happens to be occupied by The Red Bamboo, an evil organization making some weird atomic chemical or something and enslaving the nearby-islanders... who are Mothra worshippers! Of course, while fleeing The Red Bamboo, our heroes stumble across a slumbering Godzilla.
That's like the first 20-25 minutes, tops.
After that, there's like some non-plan about going on the offensive against this entire army, some lock-picking (like surprisingly a lot of lock-picking for a giant-monster movie), the Mothra cult dancing and chanting, I mean, this one guy's got an eyepatch, there's a whole underground lair that's somewhere between Bond-villain and Star Trek, some MacGuyver **** goes down... and this is all before either Mothra or Godzilla even wake up!
And then you still get like 30-35 minutes of kaiju action.
Did I mention Ebirah is some kind of giant mutated lobster-thingy?
I found this tremendously entertaining. And I wasn't even high.
I mean, honestly the special effects are no worse than other B-movies or Bond movies for that matter of the same era and some of them are actually pretty good, pretty convincing. I mean, except for the actual kaiju fights, those are absolutely hilarious. There's a whole bit with Godzilla and Ebirah like playing tennis with boulder or something. It's amazing. And I actually didn't know, going in, that Godzilla was in this, much less Mothra.
I don't know if I'm gonna go right ahead and watch Megalon next but I tell ya, Ebirah is aces in my book.



Victim of The Night
I REALLY liked Godzilla vs Hedorah (aka Smog Monster) when I re-watched it a couple of years ago. Probably not as fun as Ebirah, but weird.



Victim of The Night
Sleep Dirt is actually the first Zappa album I ever owned. I have it on vinyl, a gift from a friend.



Victim of The Night

I had the pleasure of attending an outdoor screening of the classic vampire film with a live band scoring the film the other night.
One wonders what there is to really say about the film at this point given that almost everyone has seen it, everyone respects it, and probably everybody knows how they feel about it.
There was a lot to like.


Visually the film just has so many great moments and the fact that there's some humor to it as well really makes it a fun watch. I will admit that I felt it dragging a bit at times but that could also be because I was watching it with some friends who'd never seen it, don't really watch silent movies, and really aren't Horror movie folk either, and I had that funny little tension you sometimes get when you hope your friends are enjoying it. So when it slowed down I often worried it might be losing them and that made the slower parts feel longer.
Ultimately, a super-fun experience though and probably a great way to end my Halfway To Halloween.



Victim of The Night
Not as down as Nosferatu as some people are since the non-Orlok scenes really drag for me, but when it bites, it bites hard.
I think that sums it up.



Victim of The Night
I had to share, before I go, that I ran across a LIST I had made but forgotten about of the movies I was going to watch for Halfway To Halloween.
Turns out I watched ZERO of those movies.



I had to share, before I go, that I ran across a LIST I had made but forgotten about of the movies I was going to watch for Halfway To Halloween.
Turns out I watched ZERO of those movies.

That's where a Letterboxd watchlist comes in handy, to go back to yesterday's discussion




That's where a Letterboxd watchlist comes in handy, to go back to yesterday's discussion
Judge not, that ye not be judged.



Victim of The Night
Seriously, I live in New Orleans, where Halloween is more a holiday for adults than children and is basically celebrated for several days leading up to and including the actual day. It's heart warming to hit the streets downtown and see hundreds if not thousands of grown-ass people dressed up and I mean people come out!