October Horror Challenge V2

Yeah absolutley I really like reading your guys reviews it give me some ideas on what to watch in the future

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Trust The Process

I've had this movie for a while and just hadn't gotten around to watching it yet. Even for this challenge I was humming and hawing and putting it off, but I finally felt in the right mood and watched it. I guess it felt good watching it when I was in the perfect mood for it, but I also felt like I should have watched this movie a long time ago. It's been around for a while, and it has a good reputation, but I still feel like it deserves even a little more recognition than it gets. This movie was superb. It was very realistic, with excellent acting and natural dialogue. In my opinion the best feature of this movie was the way it handled the found footage aspect. In other movies of this nature I feel like their is usually a struggle to capture what they want to film and maintain the found footage perspective, that feeling that it's naturally being filmed and not a product of a script or a film process. This movie nailed it perfectly. It also avoided the annoyances that the found footage style often has, sometimes if it's shaky or there is movement it can be hard to really see what's going on, or it can be headache inducing. It's more realistic to have people carry a camera in those situations in such a way that it isn't enjoyable to watch afterwards, but that's if it's being presented as a home video like Paranormal Activity. The premise for this movie was that they were filming for a show that looked at how firefighters work, so it was being professionally filmed right from its premise. This made it visually much more enjoyable than the genre usually is.

Category: Zombie

October 9 -

Category - Romero - Two Evil Eyes (1990)



Like most anthologies it's a give and take, this is combo of two Edgar Allen Poe stories told by Dario Argento(The Black Cat) and George Romero (The Facts in the Case of M. Valdermar). Each story is about an hour, the Romero one fells a little short while the Argento one fells a bit long but both are good stories.

In the Romero story Adrienne Barbeau plays a 40 year old who is dealing with her dying husband. The character decides it's best to cash out with as much money as possible so she enlists the help of the doctor, a skummy yuppie. The husband eventually ends up dying and then the horror begins. I don't want to give too much away but I really dug this one, the atmosphere was creepy and the characters where unlikable but not cartoonish. You understood everyone's motivations and the dark cynicism matches the gothic tale.

The Argento story Harvey Keital plays a barret wearing crime scene photographer who ends up with a cat he doesn't like. The last 20 minutes of the story are really good but it's a mess getting there. I think this might have been better as a Twilight Zone Episode or a full length feature as Keital's decent into madness doesn't really translate as well as it should. It's got a decent enough dream sequence and Argento knows how to make a gory death scene but really it's the suspense and tension in the last 20 minutes that saves the movie from being a disaster
The Facts in the Case of M. Valdermar
The Black Cat
Two Evil Eyes

October 10 -

Category - Foreign(Canada) - The Dead Zone (1983)





I watched this movie the first time when I was about 16-17 now about 20 years later I've decided to revisit this one (on DVD not VHS). Sometimes you have to be older and to have seen other films of this type to really appreciate it. After watching Scanners which is a great first act and then everything falls apart or Firestarter which takes forever to get to the point The Dead Zone tells the same style of story but does it much better.

What makes The Dead Zone so good? Well rewatching it you realize they don't waste a single scene, combine that with this epic story and you have a tight thriller. Cronenberg pulls back heavily on the gore and instead focuses on setting horrific scenes. Fires, car crashes, drownings, stabbings all take place mostly off camera which in this case works really well.

October 1st - Faust (1926) - Silent -
October 2nd - Mystery at the Wax Museum (1933) - Slasher
October 3rd - Phantom of the Opera (1943) - Universal -
October 4th - Abbott and Costello meet Frankenstein (1948)- Creature Feature -
October 5th -Carry on Screaming(1966) - Horror/Comedy -
October 6th - Tobe Hooper/Salem's Lot (1979)- Hooper -
October 7th - Firestarter (1984) - Supernatural -
October 8th - Forbidden World(1982) - Birth Year -
October 9th -Two Evil Eyes (1990) - Romero -
October 10th - The Dead Zone (1984) - Foreign -

With all the hype this film got I had higher expectations. Considering the film was shot in the seventies its having been banned was understandable. The rape scenes were quite graphic and brutal. I found the cinematography leaving much to be desired with boring camera angles, awkward pans, poor framing, and no sense at all payed to visual aesthetics. It felt like the director was as much to blame as whoever was holding the camera because a lot of shots made no sense as if the director just told someone to shoot without actually having conversations about how they wanted shots filmed. At this point though I'm just speculating. By far the most glaring flaw in the film was the acting. None of the cast gave convincing performances at any point in the entire film. Everyone always looked like they were acting. The acting wasn't as bad as an Argento, Romero, Fulci, or Carpenter film, but it was still pretty bad. Overall the movie itself wasn't bad though. It just felt very average in every other way with no other elements lifting it. I was extremely disappointed by this one. I could understand the initial hype in the 70's with such graphic rape scenes, but today there doesn't really seem to be anything special about it.

Category: Banned in a country

From Beyond the Grave: Anthology.


This is arguably the best Amicus portmanteau. It is my favorite as the great Peter Cushing orchestrates the whole show with aplomb. The "Cush" plays the elderly owner of a bric a brac shop Temptations Ltd that attracts a group of nefarious customers hellbent on ripping off the old man. Little do they know that the owner has a few of his own tricks up his sleeves. He has evidently cursed the items purchased and the buyers end up in a gruesome death. There are four segments.

The Gate Crasher has Edward Charlton (David Warner) possessed by a strange mirror. Murder and mayhem ensue when an evil spirit trapped in the mirror demands its owner sacrifice young women to satisfy his bloodlust in order to release him from the mirror..

An Act Of Kindness: Christopher Lowe (Ian Bannen) is a frustrated middle management drone trapped in a loveless marriage with Mabel (Diana Dors). Bullied by his wife, and shown no respect by his son, he befriends Jim Underwood (Donald Pleasence) an old soldier now scratching out a living as a match and shoe lace seller. In short Lowe lies about his military service and backs it up by stealing a medal from the old merchant. The soldiers daughter (Angela Pleasence) happens to be a witch and has a nasty surprise waiting for Lowe.

The Elemental: Reggie Warren (Ian Carmichael) a somewhat pompous business man cheats the old man while buying a snuff box. He is then possessed by a murderous and invisble Elemental spirit which eats away at the lifeforce of Reggie and tries to strangle his wife (Nyree Dawn Porter). A medium (Margaret Leighton) is then summoned to rid the man of the spirit.

The Door: Has Ian Ogilvy purchasing an old wooden door that when installed in their home leads to a mysterious room that threatens to do harm to he and his lovely wife (Lesley Anne Down).

I found all four segments of this portmaneau or anthology, as many call them, has sufficient chills and suspence to satisfy even the fussiest horror afficianado.

I give From Beyond The Grave 4 out of 5.

Day 13



Gerald's Game (Mike Flanagan, 2017) -

CATEGORY: 2010s film

I guess there's always something that's vaguely disappointing about a film turning out exactly how you expected. I'd already been pleasantly surprised by last year's Hush so seeing Flanagan offer another variation on the trapped-at-home set-up mainly feels like more of the same (and its central gimmick feels like a feature-length version of one particular scene from Hush anyway, to say nothing of how much it plays on a similar thematic level to M. Night Shyamalan's Split). It's just as well that it's buoyed by a pair of capable leads in Carla Gugino and Bruce Greenwood who get to exhibit quite a lot of range as the narrative twists and turns within the protagonist's psyche. It's enough to make me think that this is closer to a psychological thriller than a straight horror, but that certainly doesn't make it any less unsettling to watch.

Day 14



Body Bags (John Carpenter and Tobe Hooper, 1993) -

CATEGORY: John Carpenter

So this is a made-for-TV anthology movie where Carpenter himself plays a Cryptkeeper-like host who introduces three separate tales of ultimately middling quality. "The Gas Station" (directed by Carpenter) is a passable killer-on-the-loose kind of story that sees Carpenter retread similar ground to Halloween. "Hair" (Carpenter again) is a transplant-gone-wrong story that goes for blackly comic body horror but its excessive length and inconsistent tone easily make it the weakest chapter of the movie despite its strange turns. It's thrown into even sharper relief by "Eye" (Hooper), another transplant -gone-wrong story that's decent enough to make me both question why "Hair" was included and also why they weren't all transplant-gone-wrong stories. Body Bags isn't terrible, but I think the fact that the most enjoyable parts are Carpenter's host segments instead of the actual stories says everything you really need to know about this movie.

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Iro's Top 100 Movies v3.0

Where do I procure those little tubs of popcorn that rates the movie?

I have never liked Sam Neill. This was by far the best performance I've seen of his. Adjani had, I think, the stronger performance, but both were incredible. The cinematography was
spellbinding. It kind of reminded me of Angst with its creative angles, aesthetic framing, and the way it moved around set. There were plenty of long shots with powerful acting performances. In contrast to I Spit on Your Grave I noticed during handheld pans Possession was smooth, fluid, graceful even. The supernatural element was subtle almost to the point of doubting it was there at all.

Category: Supernatural

I abandoned two other home invasion movies before settling on this one. You're Next and Torment both failed to hold my attention for more than half an hour. They suffered from dry dialogue and sub-par acting. While the acting in Kristy was nothing mind-blowing, and the dialogue was not particularly deep or meaningful, they were decent. The screaming of the protagonist running away from killers was authentic and piercing, and the dialogue was always delivered believably, never wooden. Overall this was an enjoyable and thrilling movie, but it did not excel particularly in any area. Haley Bennett was a pretty face and played a young woman who was vulnerable yet brave. I thought some of the killers' antics were a bit cliche and not very believable, done more for dramatic effect. I also occassionally found myself questioning certain decisions from the filmmaker's perspective, like flickering the lights to cause tension, and having the killers stand menacingly in the background merely waiting to be noticed for a fright. I'm sure most people wouldn't think much about those things, and they were just trying to make an entertaining movie, but they just made no sense and broke my immersion. I would require some sort of insight into a person's mind to understand why they would choose to frighten their prey instead of going for the kill, or maim, but there was no insight given. The killers were very generic and devoid of personality. There was no real reason for their violence, so the whole movie felt gratuitous. Sure they give a brief vague indication towards some reason, some sort of game where killers go after nice pretty women and call them Kristy, but it felt like just an excuse for violence. Still it was watchable and entertaining, and I enjoyed Bennett.

Category: Home invasion

I'm way behind schedule!


Category: Body Horror

Very funny and even if this film was bad, Barbara Crampton naked in the ending would make the film worth my time!


Category: Two Horror Sequels 2/2

Major Guilty pleasure of mine.


Category: Three different Countries 1/3

This was...pretty bad...

Romero:
Carpenter:
Craven:
Hooper: The Texas Chainsaw Massacre
Castle:
Fulci:
Argento:
Home Invasion:
Creature Feature: An American Werewolf in London
Slasher: Sleepaway Camp
Zombie:
Vampire:
Comedy/Horror: The Cabin in the Woods
Banned:
Silent:
Rewatch a Favourite: Pet Sematary
Found Footage: The Tunnel
Body Horror:
Anthologies (2 or 3):
From the Year you were born:
This Decade: Annabelle Creation
Two Horror Sequels: Paranormal Activity 3, Paranormal Activity 4
Highest Rated: The Monster (2016)
Hammer Horror:
Universal:
Blumhouse:
Supernatural: It
Three different Countries:

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A slasher for me:

Sleepaway Camp

I thought SC loved it. It was average for me.

I prefer parts 2 & 3.

You mean I have to watch more!?!?

I didn't think it was bad so some day I might.

Do u prefer these movies or Slumber Party Massacre movies?

I would rank them.....

1. The Slumber Party Massacre (one of the best horror films ever)
2. Sleepaway Camp 2
3. Sleepaway Camp 3
4. Slumber Party Massacre II

And any other films in both of these series..... you can skip them.

Nah I'm the one who loves the first one.

Just wasn't as fun as I thought it would be.

I love REC. Best horror film of the 2000s next to Let the Right One In.

Do you think any of the REC sequels are worth watching?

Which Let the Right One In? The American or the Swedish version?

Only one Let the Right One In. The American one is called Let Me In.