New holiday canon: the Black Christmas movies

 HOLY CRAP IT'S NON-OCTOBER POST!  Don't get too excited: I don't imagine this is going to a regular thing around here.  But last weekend I was in a particular sort of holiday mood and watched the three Black Christmases.  And it was good.  I only like a couple of real Christmas movies - Elf and A Christmas Story are it.  I am a big fan of non-traditional Christmas fare, however, like Die Hard, A Nightmare Before Christmas, Gremlins ... and now the Black Christmas movies.  In fact, the more time that passes, the more fond of them I am.

I started with the OG from 1974, the one that started it all, the one that started slashers (an argument can be made).  It's right before Christmas, at a sorority house, and the sisters are having a little party before everyone takes off for the winter break.  There's sassy Barb (Margot Kidder) (OMG I love Barb), our SPOILERS FOR A 49 YEAR OLD MOVIE Final Girl Jess (gorgeous Olivia Hussey), loyal Phyl (Andrea Martin, recently seen in Only Murders in the Building), etc.  Barb drinks a lot - so does their house mother, Mrs. Mack, so there's really no judgment - and is outspoken; Jess is going through some shit with her pretentious conservatory musician boyfriend Peter (she's pregnant and he doesn't want her to get an ab0rt10n); quiet Claire is packing before her dad comes to pick her up and meet her townie boyfriend.  The house is getting a bunch of obscene phone calls and to be honest, they're a little disturbing.  The girls try to get the police involved but are brushed off until bodies start piling up.

Best poster too

In fact, we waste no time getting to the killing: Claire goes first, then Mrs. Mack, and both are stashed in the attic by the killer.  There is the classic glass unicorn scene, creepy killer POV, "The call is coming from inside the house!" - it's terrific.  I mean, it is a little slow - way too much time watching Peter play the piano.  But I guessed wrong about the killer, the ending is totally ambiguous and this movie is even kind of feminist.  Pretty rad for 1974.

The second Black Christmas is from 2006 and has a pretty major cast, very 2000s.  Andrea Martin is back, this time playing the sorority's house mother.  The sisters include Lacey Chaubert, Michelle Trachtenberg, Katie Cassidy, Mary Elizabeth Winstead; Oliver Hudson plays the bad boyfriend.  It starts pretty much the same with the sisters having a holiday party, and obscene phone calls, and the first girl (poor Claire, again) gets it within the first three minutes.  This time, however, there SPOILERS FOR AN ALMOST 20 YEAR OLD MOVIE two killers, because the crazy person hasn't quite escaped from the asylum yet.  But he does, and goes straight to the sorority house which had been his family's growing up.  The bigger twist is who the second killer is.

"slay ride" haha I get it

This BC iteration is very gory, like eyeballs and stuff, so fair warning if eyes squick you out.  And hoo boy do the bodies stack up: I counted thirteen (and may have missed one).  There isn't much suspense, however, and the movie spends quite a long time on the killer's backstory.  Other than two killers, however, it stays pretty faithful to the original idea.

The third Black Christmas is as recent as 2019 and departs somewhat from the formula of the first two.  It does start the same: sorority Christmas party, but the sisters are getting ominous texts instead of phone calls (who even makes phone calls anymore?).  The first two girls are offed similarly as well: the first, just before she leaves for break; the second, in her room.  This movie is PG-13, by the way, so it is relatively bloodless.  These sorority sisters have a strong bond and they are not shy about speaking up against injustice.  And when the movie takes a hard left and swings into supernatural frat boy secret societies, the girls fight back.  Girl power!  Topple the patriarchy!  Watch out for bows and arrows though (I laughed out loud when the bows and arrows showed up)!  I do like supernatural stuff but I thought BC #3 was stronger when it seemed like a straight slasher.

So anyway, happy holidays to you all!  And enjoy watching whatever makes you happy this holiday season.  Except for It's a Wonderful Life - I can't stand that movie.

Fourteenth Annual FMS Scarelicious October Movie Series: #17 Doctor Sleep

 In which we end this October with a whimper, not with a bang.  Doctor Sleep (2019) is based on Stephen King's novel of the same name, directed by Mike Flanagan (Hush, Midnight Mass, The Fall of the House of Usher, The Haunting of Hill House, The Midnight Club, The Haunting of Bly Manor).  It's a sequel to The Shining (book and movie) but hews rather closer to Kubrick's vision than King's sequel.

In a nutshell, little Danny Torrence (Ewan McGregor), who just barely survived that fateful winter at the Overlook Hotel with his mom, is all grown up.  At first, he drinks/drugs/screws around to dampen the demons in his head - he's still got the shine, you see - but visits from ghostly Dick Halloran set him on his path.  He finds a job at a hospice where he (and the resident cat who can tell when a patient is about to die) comforts the residents when they are in their final moments.

Also, there's this supernatural group - the True Knot - who kind of look like carny folk and who travel the country in their RVs, searching out children with psychic abilities (the "shine") so they can torture them and devour their abilities (the "steam") as the children scream and die.  They are lead by Rose the Hat (Rebecca Ferguson, terrific) and Zahn McClarnon ("Officer Big" from the incredible Reservoir Dogs) is on her crew.  When the True Knot catches a kid in Iowa, his dying torment is so huge that it catches the notice of both Danny and young Abra, a teenager incredibly strong in the shine - but Rose notices them too.  Danny and Abra join forces to flee and then fight Rose and her gang.

First of all, distractably shitty New England accents, per usual.  Second, this is a long movie (2.5+ hours) and should either have been a limited television series or maybe Danny didn't need to wander around the Overlook Hotel quite so much, revisiting all the old hauntings.  It drags, is what I'm saying, and I was a little bored if Rose wasn't onscreen.  Third, this movie does do a great job of evoking and revisiting Kubrick's movie, including the casting of Danny's parents in flashbacks and the hotel's set design.  The movie is decent enough but I think Flanagan's television shows are stronger.

You know, I think I'll go watch The Lost Boys again, just to end on a high note.  Consider October extended for just a bit longer.

Fourteenth Annual FMS Scarelicious October Movie Series: #16 Hatching

 I'm on a roll - I really liked Hatching, my first Finnish horror movie!  This was recommended to me by a college friend and she was right about it.  A gorgeously art-directed, gross monster movie? SIGN ME UP.

Tinja is twelve, bullied, a competitive gymnast and the daughter of a self-centered, self-involved lifestyle blogger (only ever referred to as "Mother").  Mother has created a pink and floral, gold and crystal house for Tinja, her largely-ignored little brother Matias, and her definitely ignored husband to live in.  Mother is also a former ice skater and has put all of her thwarted ambitions onto her daughter, who is good but not quite good enough.  

When a small crow gets into the house, Tinja captures it to release it back into the wild but Mother snaps its neck and tells her to get rid of it.  Later, Tinja finds the dying bird in the woods next to a nest with a single egg.  After performing a mercy killing, she takes the egg home and nurtures it, pouring her loneliness, isolation, confusion and stress into it.  When she cries on it, the eggshell absorbs her tears.  The egg grows.  And grows.  And finally hatches out a gooey, grotesque, toothed bird-monster - a wonderful practical effect. Tinja is both repulsed and compelled to take care of the hatchling, naming it Alli after a lullaby.  Alli is really her only friend.  And the two share a psychic bond.  As Alli starts to morph into a creature more like Tinja, she also tries to punish those she sees as harmful to her caretaker.

I thought this was quite good, a bit of a discourse on motherhood.  It's a very pretty film - other than the gooey bird-monster, and that monster/body horror is well done.  In Finnish with English subtitles.

Fourteenth Annual FMS Scarelicious October Movie Series: #15 The Menu

 After a run of less than stellar movies, I finally watched one that I ... liked?  I've been keeping my eye out for The Menu to arrive on a streaming platform that I have and it finally popped up.  What a stacked cast: Ralph Fiennes, Anna Taylor-Joy, Nicholas Hoult, Janet McTeer, John Leguizamo, Judith Light (who really didn't get that much to do but still).

The premise is this: twelve guests arrive on-island for a specialty dinner at an ultra-snooty restaurant - $1,250/per person.  The boat drops them off and then leaves, effectively stranding them, a fact that Margot (AT-J) notices a little uncomfortably.  She is there as the guest of Tyler (Hoult), a pretentious, self-proclaimed foodie influencer, despite the fact that he doesn't cook himself.  We've also got a ruthless restaurant critic (McTeer), a washed-up movie star (Leguizamo) and his assistant, a grouchy couple and three investment banking bros.  Everyone is rich, entitled and kind of an asshole, in various ways.

Fiennes is the chef and his small army of staff follow him worshipfully.  Service is both impeccable and inflexible; the food is abstract and ostentatious.  Chef introduces each course with a little monologue and as the courses go on, his speeches get stranger.  His mother is over there in the corner, drinking herself into oblivion.  Chef has been disillusioned and driven quite mad by catering to the thoughtless, careless rich and, well, as it turns out, everyone on the island tonight is going to die, guests and staff alike.  The dinner to end all dinners.

Both Anna Taylor-Joy and Ralph Fiennes are great, of course.  The Menu isn't straight-up horror but seems a little uncategorizable - weirder than your typical thriller, medium bloody, not funny enough to be a dark comedy.  If you like odd little movies - if you like to eat the rich - take a taste for yourself.

Fourteenth Annual FMS Scarelicious October Movie Series: #14 Spellcaster (1988)

 I also found this one on that AV Club's list of "great horror movies never releases in theaters."  The production ran out of money and Spellcaster only surfaced on video in 1992; it's on Youtube now.  I enjoyed it but how this little movie made any sort of "great" movies list is beyond me.  It ain't good, y'all.

We open with a Goth music video vixen, Cassandra Castle (played by A-ha!'s "Take On Me" girl), lip-syncing and fluttering around a damn impressive castle (any budget they had must have been spent on the location shots at that castle, in Bracciano, Italy).  This is all part of a "Rock TV" (stand-in for MTV) contest where contestants win a trip to the castle to hang out with Ms Castle and search for a hidden $1,000,000 check.  There are seven contestants: a British woman who likes to hunt; Yvette, French girl; Tony, smarmy Italian; Tara from California (who likes to run around in leotards and leg warmers); a chunky guy; and our heroes, a brother and sister from Cleveland, Tom and Jackie (Gail O'Grady).  The castle is owned by the mysterious Signor Diaboli: the contestants have the run of the place but are admonished not to damage any of the priceless antiques.

Well, you know how it goes.  Bodies start piling up immediately.  Yvette petulantly breaks some glassware and then, when she sits down in a wooden chair/throne ornately carved with lions, she gets eaten alive when the lion carvings come to life.  When a drunk Cassandra stumbles into a dungeon, she gets chased out when reanimated corpses come after her.  Tony slashes a painting with his switchblade and ends up "falling" off the highest tower.  The chunky guy gets turned into a pig (this movie is not subtle) and the pig-man suit is amazing.  There are demons popping out of paintings, an aggressive suit of armor, a winged and toothed worm and some sort of tiger/wolf thing.

When it's down to Jackie, Tom and Cassandra, Jackie makes her way to Signor Diaboli's chamber.  As it turns out, he's actually the Devil - Diablo - and he's PLAYED BY ADAM ANT.  He's handsome and charming and hopes they've been enjoying the contest, although really all of them have deserved what they got.  It's a gruesomer Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory!

This is an ultra-low budget film and the effects are primitive, especially since it was filmed in 1988.  That said, I adored the practical effects: the lion chair gnawing on Yvette, the pig-man; the reanimated corpses were all fantastic.  I am willing to forgive a LOT for practical effects.  I do stand by my previous statement, however: this is not a particularly good movie.

Fourteenth Annual FMS Scarelicious October Movie Series: #13 Th Babysitter (2017)

This one was plucked from the AV Club's recent list of "20 great horror movies never released in the theater."  It's from 2017 and can be found on Netflix: The Babysitter.

Nervous and nerdy Cole gets bullied quite a bit but has a loving, supportive family, a cute and friendly neighbor and a hot babysitter, Bee (Samara Weaving).  He's twelve, and is ridiculed for still having a sitter - until they see her.  Not only is she hot, she's super-cool: drives a rad truck, knows her science fiction and old Westerns, is always down for homemade pizzas and impromptu living room dance parties.  When Cole's parents do a quick weekend away, Bee stays over.  She's done this before and Cole has always wondered what she does after he goes to bed.  So this time he stays up and spies on her.  Bee's friends come over - the quarterback (Robby Amell), the cheerleader (Bella Thorne), the fun guy, the goth chick and the nerd.  It's all fun and games and spin the bottle ... until Bee stabs the nerd as a human sacrifice for her most recent deal with the devil.  You know, s@t@anic de@th cult stuff.

From there, things escalate quickly as Cole is caught out.  He defends himself well, however, since this is his home - basically Home Alones their asses.  The movie gets very bloody and very funny.

Directed by McG, this is a slick, self-aware production.  I would put it on a par with Jennifer's Body - better than average, far better than your usual straight-to-video-or-streaming, and vastly entertaining.  There is a sequel, The Babysitter: Killer Queen, but from what I've read, that one should be avoided at all costs.

Fourteenth Annual FMS Scarelicious October Movie Series: #12 Totally Killer

 Here's a brand new horror-comedy for you: Totally Killer and yes, we're going back to the 80s again.  

It starts out in present day, with Jamie (Kiernan Shipka) being completely over it with her parents.  Thirty-five years ago, their high school was shattered by three murders, of Jamie's mom's friends, by the Sweet Sixteen Killer.  And then, on Halloween, the SSK returns for unfinished business: stabbing Jamie's mom (Julie Bowen) sixteen times and killing her right there in their home.  Luckily, Jamie's friend Amelia is a science prodigy and builds a time machine, based on her own mom's schematics.  When Jamie is chased by the SSK, she manages to get the time machine working and transports herself back to October 27, 1987.  She meets up with Amelia's mom and sets out to save the three murder victims - and her own mom too, all of whom are sixteen years old, just like her.  

As someone who was there in 1987, the "80s hair" in Totally Killer is, like, totally wrong.  And we didn't call our friends "bitches" - that's a more modern usage.  Kiernan Shipka is great as a fish out of water, trying to apply 2023 morals/ideals to the late 1980s.  There are pretty wild swings between comedy and horror - it's never suspenseful or scary, but a little bloody and violent (Jamie's mom's fight against the killer is brutal).

This is lightweight entertainment, like they wanted to be Scream but it's less well done and not as smart, with more superficial characters.  Good enough for a watch but it won't be one of the ones we remember.

Fourteenth Annual FMS Scarelicious October Movie Series: #11 The House on Sorority Row (1983)

I got so burned by Stephen King adaptations in the first part of the month that I've decided to embrace as many 1980s slashers as I can.  Hence The House on Sorority Row, starring an absolutely gorgeous young Eileen Davidson.

It opens with a flashback to June 19, 1961, as Mrs. Slater struggles through a difficult birth.  It appears that she loses the baby ... or does she?

And then we're back in the "now," a/k/a June 19th in the early 1980s.  College graduation has just wrapped up and the sorority girls are packing up after the school year.  Seven of them - Katie, Vicki (Davidson), Stevie, Morgan, Liz, Diane and Jeanie - are resentful that their house mother (Mrs. Slater) is closing the house before they can have their blow-out party.  They decide to rebel against her and have the party anyway.  She gets very upset and a little violent, whacking people with her cane.  They plan a prank against her and it goes horribly wrong: Vicki ends up shooting and killing her.  They sink her body in the pool and plan to deal with it after the party.

The band playing the party is VERY 80s, by the way.  Also very 80s: Liz's bitchin' van.

Once the party really gets going, so does the killer, whom for a while everyone thinks is a not-as-dead-as-we-thought Mrs. Slater.  In order, these folks get stabbed by that cane or otherwise sliced and diced: some random glasses-wearing nerd who is in the wrong place at the wrong time; Stevie, in the basement, trying to turn off the pool lights; Morgan, in her own bedroom; Diane (in Liz's bitchin' van); Jeanie (in the bathroom); Liz (in her van); Vicki (adjacent to the van); the doctor who attended Mrs. Slater's fateful delivery back in 1961.  Katie ends up being a fairly clever Final Girl (despite some egregious over-acting), luring the killer out and fighting back.  She ends up killing the killer ... or does she?

I didn't like The House on Sorority Row quite as much as Slumber Party Massacre, largely because THoSR took itself so very seriously.  Still, a solid entry into the genre.

Fourteenth Annual FMS Scarelicious October Movie Series: #10 Barbarian

 My friend JG - from elementary school holy moly - has been an excellent resource for television and movie recommendations lately.  He insisted that I watch Wentworth and was SO right about that; if you haven't watched that Australian women's prison drama on Netflix yet, GO DO THAT RIGHT NOW.  So when he recommended Barbarian, I was like of course I will watch that.

Tess, in Detroit for a job interview, arrives at her AirBnB to find it double-booked and already occupied by Keith (played by Bill Skarsgard, never not twitchy).  There are (apparently) no available hotel rooms in all of Detroit so she reluctantly agrees to share with him, and they end up getting along and chatting into the night.  Cue creepy noises overnight and doors opening by themselves.  After the interview the next day, Tess returns to the house and ends up locked in the basement because the movie wants her to.  She can't get out the window because the movie doesn't want her to.  Instead, she finds a creepy hidden door, opens it, walks down the creepy hall to a lighted room that contains a stained mattress, a camera, a bucket and a bloody handprint on the wall.  Keith returns in time to free her from the basement but since he doesn't really believe her, goes down to look for himself.  He doesn't come back.  When she goes down after him, she finds a creepy stairway to an even creepier sub-basement.  She finds Keith down there.

Y'all, the movie comprised of the above paragraph is so tense and terrifying that not only was I watching through my fingers, I actually had to stop the movie when Tess first got locked in the basement, read a whole bunch of plot summaries and then finish the movie the next night. My notes from the first attempt read: NOPE CAN'T DO IT.

But this is a tale of two movies, you see, because after Tess finds Keith in the sub-basement, there's a slam cut to a douchebag actor (played excellently by Justin Long) driving his convertible along the PCH.  Which, thank goodness, because it gives the viewer a break from the tension.  There's another slam cut to a flashback to the Reagan years later, before finishing up back in the house.  But here's the thing, once Justin Long's character enters the fray, Barbarian just isn't scary anymore.  It just starts getting more and more out there and even silly.  And the characters make SO MANY stupid decisions that real people just wouldn't make.  It's as though the screenwriters completely changed their mind halfway through as to the type of movie they wanted to make.

The tape measure scene is intentionally hilarious, however.  Also, I will never rent an AirBnB after this.

Fourteenth Annual FMS Scarelicious October Movie Series: #9 Slumber Party Massacre (1982)

 Finally!  I had to go back all the way to 1982 to find an enjoyable horror movie!  Slumber Party Massacre (a/k/a The Slumber Party Massacre) is an excellent little slasher, written - as satire - by a woman and directed - as straight horror - by another woman.  There may be naked b00bs within the first three minutes, and a full on gratuitous shower scene (apparently insisted upon by Roger Corman as producer), but this flick is full of Girl Power.

Trish's parents go out of town for the weekend so she invites some of her BFFs from the varsity high school basketball team to come over for a slumber party.  Meanwhile, a dude has escaped from a nearby mental hospital with murder on his mind and a big electric drill in his hands.  There is a high body count (see following paragraph) but we end up with three Final Girls.  Traumatized, of course, but alive and having prevailed over the killer.

Here's who gets knocked off: female phone technician gets pulled into her own van and drilled between the eyes; Trish's friend and teammate Linda gets trapped in the locked school with the killer; Trish's slightly creepy neighbor gets impaled; Trish's friend and teammate Diane and her boyfriend John get drilled in Trish's garage during a make-out session; the pizza delivery guy (through the eyes - yikes); high school boy Jeff, gutted by the back door; Jeff's buddy Neil, in the neighbor's yard; Jackie, Trish's friend and teammate, whilst opening the front door and letting the killer in the house; Kimberly, Trish's friend and teammate, stabbed in Trish's bedroom; and the girl's basketball coach shows up to see if everyone is okay, whales on the killer with a fireplace poker but ultimately gets gutted too.  Only Trish, new neighbor and teammate Valerie and Val's little sister Courtney make it out alive: after Trish, with a kitchen knife, and Val, with a machete, fight back.

This is a terrific little slasher.  The killer's weapon is totally phallic - but Val's machete is bigger.  The girls get ogled by the guys but they also pass the Bechdel test; they are friends and teammates with interests other than boys, plus none of the males survive.  The kills are numerous and varied.  There's a sense of humor too: Kimberly in the fridge; Val trying to utilize an electric circle saw.  This was a great palate-cleanser and has left me ready for the next one.

Fourteenth Annual FMS Scarelicious October Movie Series: #8 In the Tall Grass

 Another day, another crappy Stephen King adaptation.

I read the source story recently, a joint effort by Stephen King and son Joe Hill, found in a short story collection, Full Throttle, by Hill.  It was a solid story: unsettling, gross, easily imagined in one's mind's eye.  And that's the problem, I think, with so many SK adaptions.  He (and also JH) writes so vividly and so matter-of-factly that it is easy to picture what's going on, to "see" it clearly, even if it involves vampires or sewer clowns or giant rats or malevolent fields of grass.  Here, it just seems silly, like a lethal game of Marco Polo in a hayfield.

The story is this: pregnant Becky and her big brother Cal are heading across the country so Becky can give her baby up for adoption to a California couple.  Somewhere in the heartland (Kansas, I think), they stop so she can throw up (morning sickness).  They hear voices calling for help from inside a vast field of tall (like six-plus feet high) grass, a little boy and then, later, the boy's mom.  The siblings go into the field to try to help but it become clear very quickly that once in the tall grass, you will never get out.  They become separated and time and space become wonky, moving them around, keeping them apart, keeping them from getting back to the road.

In the story, they meet the kid, Tobin, and the kid's dad, Ross, who has become crazy because of [movie reasons].  The mom/wife is dead and Tobin and Ross are starving and dehydrated.  It doesn't really end well for anyone.  In the movie, a whole new character is added - Travis, the kid who knocked Becky up.  He has come to Kansas looking for the siblings because they've been gone for two months, having never reached California, but somehow, with the wonky time, gets to the field first and is the one who lures Tobin and his family in ... it's confusing.  I get that they needed to bulk up the story to get to movie length but, sigh.  It just didn't work for me.  Plus there are people with grass for heads and root people buried beneath the field.

If you read online articles, you can find the ending "explained" - feel free to do so.  The movie ending is certainly less bleak than the story.  I wasn't impressed, although Patrick Wilson (slumming here) does his best to chew the scenery as crazed father/grass-acolyte Ross.

Seriously though - where are all the good horror movies at?

Fourteenth Annual FMS Scarelicious October Movie Series: #7 R.L. Stine's Zombie Town

Full confession: I've never read any R.L. Stine.  I understand that he writes very popular scary/scary-adjacent books for kids/tweens, though, so when the A.V. Club put this Zombie Town on its list of Hulu Halloween movies to watch, I thought, "Sure, that sounds good."  Reader, it was not good.

In Carverville, a small town named after its most famous resident, a schlock horror director who put forth dozens of zombie movies, said director (played by Dan Ackroyd) is releasing his first zombie flick in 30 years.  Everyone in town is super-excited about it, except Mike, who doesn't like horror movies and has a crush on his best friend Amy.  When Carver drops off the movie, Mike calls Amy to give her a private showing (not a euphemism) and they unwittingly unleash the curse inside the movie, turning everyone in town into zombies.  Except for them and Carver because [movie reasons].  Mike and Amy have to survive the zombies and break the curse.

This is a PG-13 rating so the zombies don't eat brains or flesh: they suck out your soul so none of them are technically dead.  The two leads, Mike and Amy, have no chemistry.  The acting is excruciating.  The dialogue is awkward at best.  The zombies are boring.  The best parts are (1) a couple of really good pop songs and (2) the fake trailers for Carver's 1970s zombie movies - I wish I'd gotten to see those instead.

An article on Decider said SKIP IT and I should have.

Fourteenth Annual FMS Scarelicious October Movie Series: #6 When a Stranger Calls (1979)

 Yeah, baby - old school!  I've long heard about When a Stranger Calls and only finally saw it.  I'm not entirely sure it lived up to the hype but still, it's good to check the classics off the list.

Carol Kane plays Jill, a babysitter, sitting for a new family.  Before long, she is getting phone calls every fifteen minutes or so:

Have you checked the children?

It's a simple premise and very effectively builds dread, bolstered by creepy music.  Jill eventually calls the police - a couple of times - and finally they are able to trace the call:

The call is coming from inside the house!

Yikes!  The police arrive and SPOILER FOR A 44 YEAR OLD MOVIE: the crazy guy is upstairs, the children are dead and Jill has a nervous breakdown.  As one obviously does.

Seven years later the crazy guy has escaped and former cop/current private investigator Charles Durning is trying to catch him.  From here on out, it is more of a thriller than a horror movie, until we get back to Jill, now grown with two children of her own, whom the crazy guy gets in his sights again.

Have you checked the children?

This movie isn't really horror but it does get quite tense (and seems longer than its 1:37 runtime).  Carol Kane, when she is onscreen, is very good.

 

 

 

Fourteenth Annual FMS Scarilicious October Movie Series: #5 John Carpenter's Vampires

 In this 1998 flick, directed and scored by John Carpenter, James Woods leads a very organized and well-funded (by the Vatican, no less) squad of vampire slayers (no, not chosen teenaged girls).  They rout a big nest - and these vamps do not die easily, by the way, as you have to literally hammer the stakes into their hearts and then drag them into sunlight to burn.  And then, whilst celebrating their success with boozer and s3x workers, the master vampire descends upon them.  He pretty much literally shreds the squad and h00kers (fifteen or so bodies in his wake), leaving only James Woods, Daniel Baldwin and Sheryl Lee alive.  The master vamp has bitten Sheryl, however, so JW and DB use her psychic connection with him to track him, at least until she turns.

Along the way they are joined by a young priest who informs them that this master vampire is the O.G. vampire, like the first one, accidentally created in the 1300s by the Catholic Church during a botched exorcism.  Now, the O.G. vamp is searching for a relic that will allow him to day-walk.  He finds the relic.  James Woods et als. find him.  Carnage ensues.

Question from my notes: Has James Woods ever been considered a good actor?

Look, this is a basic, boring, not at all scary vampire movie.  Although the bloody (extremely bloody) bits are fun, I expected a lot more from John Carpenter.

Fourteenth Annual FMS Scarilicious October Movie Series: #4 Werewolves Within

 Not a Stephen King adaptation!  My initial notes say: "as a horror-comedy from 2021, there's no way this will have practical [werewolf] effects."  I believe I was mistaken but as there were hardly any werewolves, it was a little difficult to tell.

A new Forest Service ranger comes to a small town for a new job.  It's a quirky small town, of course, with very few, very quirky townspeople.  There's conflict already: a gas company wants to run a line through town and some people want the money the gas company has, while some are opposed to the pipeline; there's also a wealthy couple (Cheyenne Jackson and Harvey Guillen) who have moved in wanting to change things; and the local inn owner's husband is cheating on her.  The ranger does befriend a manic pixie dream postal carrier, played by Milana Vayntrub (the AT&T girl), and she is super cute and charming.  Once all this is established, something knocks the power out to the town, destroys everyone's back-up generators and starts killing people and small dogs.  Oh, and it's a full moon.

More from my notes: "Is this going to be the kind of movie where we don't get to see anything [like kills]?  Halfway through: YEP."  And "[b]ig body count in the las half but where are the fucking werewolves?"

Well, we did get a werewolf at the end - and it was pretty evident who it was since almost everyoen else was dead.  This is a cute and moderately entertaining movie but other than some blood and guts, not scary in the least.  And not exactly what I had been hoping for.  Sigh.  Have I already seen all the good werewolf movies?

Fourteenth Annual FMS Scarilicious October Movie Series: #3 Nightmares & Dreamscapes

 Yes, it's another Stephen King adaptation, this time TNT's 2006 anthology "even" based on short stories from three different SK collections (not just Nightmares & Dreamscapes, to be clear).  As has been well-documented here, I love horror anthologies, despite how hit or miss they can be.  I also love SK short stories which are usually more hit than miss.  For made-for-tv / non-cable horror, N&D is okay, although I questioned some of the stories they chose to do.  I also suspect that I saw this on actual television when it came out in 2006 but that is neither here nor there.

• "Battleground" - Starring William Hurt and the helicopter pilot from The Road Warrior, whereby a hitman has to deal with the consequences of his job.  I love this short story - and it's a very short one so this episode seems a touch long - and they did a pretty good job with it.  There's no dialogue and the effects are darn good.  Best episdoe of the bunch.  The story itself is actually from the Nightshift collection and is more wierd than horror.
• "Crouch End" - I love this story too with its Lovecraftian tone, although much of what I love makes it difficult to adapt for television, especially with 2006 CGI: an American couple gets lost in an increasingly weird London neighborhood.  Starring Claire Forlani.
• "Umney's Last Case" - An homage to Dashiell Hammett et als., this is the story where private investigator Clyde Umney (William H. Macy) finds his life falling apart for a reason he could never have imagined.  Macy got excellent reviews for his dual role here.  Not horror though, by a long shot.
• "The End of the Whole Mess" - Ron Livingston and Henry Thomas play Howard and Bobby Fornoy respectively, two genius brouthers who destroy the world by trying to save it.  The short story is terrific but it really doesn't work well as a movie: the story is written as a diary entry by Howard, recapping what they did.  Depressing as hell too!
• "The Road Virus Heads North" - This one is from the Everything's Eventual collection.  It's a good story (horror writer meets haunted painting), with middling execution here.  Stephen King is just sooooo difficult to put on screen!  And they felt the need to verbally explain the symbolism rather than let the viewer figure it out.  Tom Berenger stars.  And the "New England" accents are predictably shitty.
• "The Fifth Quarter" - Jeremy Sisto is one of a group of ex-cons fighting over a treasure map.  I found this one boring, and might have dozed off a bit.  It's not much like the source story at all.
• "Autopsy Room Four" - Also from Everything's Eventual, this is another odd choice for adaption seeing how the whole story is told from the point of view of a man trapped in his body, unable to move or speak, such that everyone thinks he's dead.  It's played sort of as a comedy here and I really didn't like it.  Plus I'm not a Richard Thomas fan.
• "You Know They've Got a Hell of a Band" - This is one of my favorite SK short stories - I just like the idea with all the musicians who died too young.  Steven Weber and Kim Delaney star in this one.  I thought it was pretty good, although in the story, since you're reading, you believe the dead people are who they are (Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix, Elvis, etc.); here, since you've got actors made up to look like the dead musicians, there's a disconnect.  I also thought it was lacking the sense of dread from the story but still, one of the stronger episodes. 

Fourteenth Annual FMS Scarilicious October Movie Series: #2 Salem's Lot

 Before Netflix abandoned its DVD service, to which I have been a loyal subscriber for a long, long time, I managed to get a couple of older horror flicks, which are hard-to-impossible to find streaming, including this iconic television movie from 1979.  That vampire boy floating outside the second story window has traumatized all of Gen X - kids who shouldn't have been watching Salem's Lot when it was on.  The cast includes David Soul (from the OG Starsky & Hutch and miscast, if you ask me), Bonnie Bedelia and Fred Willard, plus a whole bunch of "who's that guy?!" actors.

If you aren't familiar with it, this 1979 t.v. movie is based on a 1975 Stephen King novel of the same name.  Go read the novel.  It's long but I'll wait.  It's terrific.  Writer Ben Mears returns to the Maine town he grew up in to write about an old mansion, the Marsden House.  But two newcomers, Mr. Straker and Mr. Barlow, purported antiques dealers, have bought the house.  Barlow is, of course, a vampire and Straker is his main minion.  Townspeople start getting killed for food or turned into baby vamps.  Ben amasses a small team to fight the vampires -  girlfriend Susan, an older high school teacher, a local doctor, a Catholic priest and a soon-to-be-orphaned teenaged boy, Mark.  It doesn't go well for the team and only Ben and Mark live to fight another day.

Look, I'll grant you that the vampire kid at the window holds up, and the Barlow monster design is fantastic (except why did they make him blue?), but otherwise this is a fairly underwhelming horror offering for the 70s, even keeping television standards under consideration.  It was directed by Tobe Hooper, for crying out loud!  Davis Soul is not as charming as Ben should be; Bonnie Bedelia plays Susan as a lot dumber than the book version; Barlow and Straker are very different from the book as well.  The "Maine" accents are predictably shitty.  The acting is pretty painful, to be honest, and the narrative seems disjointed and hard to follow.  Maybe if I didn't know the book so well I would have appreciated this more?

Fourteenth Annual FMS Scarilicious October Movie Series: #1 Cell

 Welcome to the Fourteenth Annual FMS Scarilicious October Movie Series, wherein I attempt to justify this little blog's existence - once so full of television recaps and movie and book reviews.  It's still alive, or at least undead.  It seems apt, therefore, to do horror movies.

We kick things off with Cell, the Stephen King adaptation that reunites Room 1408 stars John Cusack and Samuel L. Jackson.  I've read the novel and while it certainly isn't SK's best, it's far better than this sad excuse for a movie.  The premise is SPOILER a signal goes out over the world's cellphones which turns people into "phone-crazies" a/k/a "phoners" - pretty much just psychic rage murder zombies who kill every other person they see.  A group of survivors, who survived because they don't have phones and escaped the signal, band together and make their way north out of Boston, looking for safety.  Along the way they meet up with other survivors and immolate some sleeper phoner groups, but the phoners, being psychically connected, exact retribution.

There are a lot of changes from the book, no doubt in large part due to budgetary constraints.  Instead of starting out in easily-recognizable/expensive downtown Boston, the movie opens in a generic airport terminal.  In the book, the hero Clay (Cusack in the movie), doesn't own a cellphone and lives in Maine, where his ex-wife and young son live; in the movie, Clay has a cellphone - which he tries to use - but the battery is dead and he has a Boston apartment.  Tom (SLJ), whom Clay meets out on the street in the book, is a T-driver in the movie and they make their escape via generic subway tunnels, not over the Tobin Bridge.  In the book, the heroes walk at night when the phoners are sleeping; in the movie, they walk during the day with no real trouble from the phoners.  Towards the end, once they get to Maine, they travel in a school bus in the book; in the movie, for some reason they are in an ice cream truck (which enraged me as it is much less defensible than a school bus).

Also: Stacey Keach is completely miscast as the headmaster of the boarding school they hole up in for a bit and the "Boston" accents are predictably shitty.  Verdict: Cell is a terrible movie and borderline incoherent.  John Cusack and Samuel L. Jackson are, if you will pardon the pun, totally phoning it in on this one.