Sixteenth Annual FMS Scarelicious October Movie Series: #13 Cheerleader Camp

 And here we are, lucky thirteen (I sort of fizzled out at the end, sorry about that), rounding out yet another year (sixteen! wow!) of watching lots of scary movies in October.  To close out the month, we end with the wonder that is 1988's Cheerleader Camp.  Found, in its entirety, on YouTube.  Is it good?  Oh, hell no.  But is it glorious? A resounding YES.

Alison seems to have it all: head cheerleader, pretty, popular, with a studly boyfriend.  But at Camp Hurrah - the titular cheerleading camp, with teams from all over (all over where?  are they college teams? it's vague at best, like much of this movie) - Brent the boyfriend (played by former teen heartthrob Leif Garrett, already way past his prime in 1988) is cheating with other girls, and many of the girls - including some on her own squad - are out to defeat her for title of Queen of the Cheerleaders.  Or whatever.  Only Alison's squad's mascot, Cory, is friendly and supportive, even as Alison is wracked by anxiety, paranoia and scary nightmares.

Then the killings start.  First a non-teammate rival is found on her bed, wrists slashed. Everyone thinks she did it herself until the other bodies start piling up, including teammate Pam, the camp director, the weird handyman, etc. etc.  I would like to state for the record that after the first body is found, my notes read: I think Alison is killing her competition in a fugue state ... or maybe Single White Female Cory is killing them for her.

I can see where they tried for a plot with this flick but it really didn't quite get there.  The paperthin characterizations and really, really bad acting doesn't help.  But there's classic tempera paint blood, a few nekkid boobies and big 80s hair, so what's not to like?

Sixteenth Annual FMS Scarelicious October Movie Series: #12 Christmas Bloody Christmans

 This movie (streaming on Netflix) is not what I thought it was.  I thought it was the David Harbour Christmas horror movie, which is actually Violent Night.  This one is The Terminator as played by a Santa robot.

The plot is straightforward.  The military, having successfully built combat robots to fight overseas wars, has sold their robotics technology to various corporations.  One such company has made the "RoboSanta+" for toy stores and malls, doing away with the need for Santas-for-hire.  In some small town, one of those RoboSantas (played by an unrecognizable Abraham Benrubi (from ER!)) wakes up in its Main Street toy store and starts a very violent, very bloody rampage.  And it is a foul-mouthed, hard-drinking indie record store owner who is left to fight him.

CBC is a low budget flick, looking like it was shot on location in town and in various homes.  The number of f-bombs dropped far surpasses Deadwood's own impressive total and I wonder how much dialogue was ad-libbed.  This movie looks like it was a lot of fun to shoot.  It is brutally violent, with a penchant for splitting rubber heads down the middle with a big axe; the practical effects are old school and pretty gnarly.  It was original and quite a change from a lot of the cookie-cutter horror films out there now.  That said, when I paused the movie to see how much time was left, I was surprised that only an hour had gone by (it's around 90 minutes total) - it seemed to take forever.  I liked it okay but don't know that I can really recommend it to anyone.

Funnily enough, for a movie about a murderous rampaging Santa robot, for me the most unbelievable part of the whole thing was that a town that size was able to support an indie record store.

Sixteenth Annual FMS Scarelicious October Movie Series: #11 The Dead Don't Die

 I knew nothing about The Dead Don't Die going into it.  Well, I mean, zombies, but other than that.  And then, as the titular theme song (good song) rolled over the opening credits, my jaw dropped at the cast. Huge cast, so many names!  And then the director: Jim Jarmusch.  And then I understood the huge cast.  I've never actually seen a Jim Jarmusch movie (until now) and so I don't know if TDDD is exemplary of his style.  But I'm guessing it is, with the deadpan absurdity, the repetition, the fourth wall breaks.  Afterwards, I think that I had read something online about Jarmusch doing a zombie movie but I certainly hadn't made the connection.

Here's the cast:  Bill Murray (small town chief of police), Adam Driver (cop), Chloe Sevigny (cop), Tilda Swinton (Scottish undertaker/ninja/SPOILER); Steve Buscemi (racist farmer); Danny Glover (hardware store owner); Tom Waits (hobo/narrator); Selena Gomez (Cleveland* hipster); Austin Butler (Cleveland hipster*); Iggy Pop (zombie); Carol Kane (zombie); Rosie Perez (news anchor); RZA (delivery driver).

Here's the plot: due to fracking at both poles (the U.S. Dept. of Energy says it's TOTALLY FINE), the earth has shifted off its axis, fucking everything up and causing zombies to rise up and wreck havor.  On the plus side, they're the slow-moving types, easy to kill but overwhelming in numbers.  On the negative side, ZOMBIES.

Is it a good zombie movie**?  It's okay, a little slow but with decent zombie makeup, nice humor sprinkled with legitimate gore.   Is is a good Jim Jarmusch movie?  You tell me.

* No disrespect intended, as I was born in Cleveland but left shortly thereafter and never went back, but does Cleveland even have hipsters?

** Apparently a LOT of zombie movie fans hated this movie, but I do think JJ was attempting some sort of satire, which, as the OG George Romero would tell you, is always a good thing for zombie movies.

Sixteenth Annual FMS Scarelicious October Movie Series: #10 The Lost Boys

 Here I was, thinking that this was going to be a throwaway post.  I re-watched The Lost Boys (in my head, it's just Lost Boys) last night because a coworker and I were talking about appropriate horror movies for his fourteen year old daughter.  He's been slowly introducing her to things like Poltergeist and Alien and she is NOT impressed when he squirms and jumps at these iconic movies - that TERRIFIED ALL OF US back in the day.  I suggested The Lost Boys and he was like, ooh good one, and I wondered if she'd balk at the 80s of it all, and he said that she loves Stranger Things, and I said well, I have it on DVD if you have something still to play DVDs on, and he's like, OF COURSE I DO.  But then that night, at home, I thought I should rewatch it to see if it really is appropriate for a fourteen year old because it's rated R and what the hell do I know about what a fourteen year old should watch.

And here's why I thought it would be a throwaway post because I LOVE The Lost Boys and I rewatch it a lot and I was sure that I had done a post here about it within the last couple of years.  But I can't find a post.  And I think maybe I've never included it in a Scarelicious post?

ANYWAY The Lost Boys is AWESOME and you should watch it, or watch it again.  It came out in 1987 and it is soooooooooo 80s - but like real 80s.  It was largely filmed in Santa Cruz (California), on its boardwalk, and you can tell - especially in the opening bits - that these are real folks, not actors: punks, New Wavers, dudes in Speedos, street kids.  The soundtrack is amazing and I'm pretty sure I bought it on cassette when the movie came out.

It's a vampire flick - nearly a horror-comedy with some serious 80s music video style (Joel Schumacher was the director, if that tells you anything).  And it has some surprisingly brutal violence in one or two scenes, something that I always forget in the face of all that hair and shoulder pads and Kiefer Sutherland's bleached-blond snarling and the beauty that is that era's Jason Patric.  The cast is amazing: Kiefer and Jason, plus the Coreys (Haim and Feldman), and Jamie Gertz, and Dianne Weist, and Alex Winter (of Bill and Ted fame), and Edward Herrmann (of Gilmore Girls fame).  Basically, a divorced mom and her two boys move in with her father, in a seaside town that is overrun with vampires.  That's all you need to know about the plot.  Seriously, I adore this movie.

Sixteenth Annual FMS Scarelicious October Movie Series: #9 I Know What You Did Last Summer (2025)

 I have seen the OG, 1997 I Know What You Did Last Summer, starring Jennifer Love Hewitt (Julie James), Freddie Prinze Jr. (Ray), Sarah Michelle Gellar (Helen Shivers) and Ryan Phillippe (Whatsisname).  It came out a year after Scream, intent on capitalizing on that stunner's success; IKWYDLS was a decent slasher but not nearly as good as Scream.  And so when I learned that they'd done a new installment in the series (the 1997 one, 1998's I Still Know What You Did Last Summer, 2006's I'll Always Know What You Did Last Summer (which I definitely did not see)), I was like, oh, is that still a thing?  And yet, as far as decent series with diminishing returns goes, this most recent I Know holds up okay.

In 2024, Ava returns to her hometown of Southport, South Carolina, for her BFF Danica's engagement party.  Also there are members of her high school clique: Danica's fiance Teddy and Ava's ex Milo, plus Stevie, a townie who never got to leave Southport to go to college.  It's July 4th and the five decide to drive up to "Reaper's Corner," a cliffside road above the South Carolina coast (with those rocky cliffs, that's definitely not SC's coast).  Goofing around, a little high on booze and weed, they cause a truck to go over the side of the cliff.  Teddy convinces everyone not to tell what happened and they all go about their separate ways with varying degrees of guilt.

One year later, Ava is back in town for Danica's bridal shower: different fiance, as Teddy got really weird after the accident.  Then Danica gets an anonymous note - I KNOW WHAT YOU DID LAST SUMMER - and the bodies start stacking up like cordwood.  In over her head, Ava learns that back in 1997, there was another serial killer killing people in Southport: she does some digging and tracks down SPOILER Julie James (JLH, reprising her role from the first two movies).  Also still in town is Ray (FPJr.) and SPOILER SPOILER SPOILER the vampire slayer herself, SMG, reprises her role of long-deceased Croaker Queen Helen Shivers.

The body count is decent (I counted seven); the Final Girl(s) acquit themselves well.  And the ending SPOILER SPOILER sets up yet another movie with Julie James at the center.  Good for you, JLH!  I Know What You Did Last Summer is a perfectly adequate slasher that I found entertaining, with a splash of late 90s nostalgia thrown in for good measure.  I didn't find it scary - I don't seem to be finding many of these movies scary these days, which either says something about the movies I'm selecting or my current unease with the state of the workd - but I certainly didn't regret watching it.

Why does everyone have their

butts to the camera here?

Sixteenth Annual FMS Scarelicious October Movie Series: #8 28 Years Later

 The third in the 28 installment ... having loved 28 Days Later and liked 28 Weeks Later quite well, to say that I was looking forward to Danny Boyle's 28 Years Later was an understatement.  Now, having watched it, was it worth the wait?  I think so, but I also can understand the ire I've seen from viewers who were expecting more of the same from the "rage zombie" situation.

Synopsis: Twenty-eight years after Londoners unwittingly unleashed the rage virus on an unsuspecting Great Britain, the world has managed to contain the virus to the British Isles.  Great Britain is under quarantine, its surrounding waters surrounded by other country's navies.  No one is allowed off the British Isles and the denizens have been left to fend for themselves.  The residents of Holy Island are doing better than most: connected to the mainland by a causeway that is only accessible at low tide, with deadly rip currents otherwise, the folk there are doing okay, in a just-above-medieval lifestyle sort of way.  (They are a little weird religously but understandable.)  They do have a tradition of sending youth to the mainland when they are 14-15, to learn to kill the infected.  

Young Spike, age 12, is old for his age in many ways (dealing with a sick mum); his dad Jamie (Aaron Taylor-Johnson, unrecognizable) takes him over for his field trip.  Spike successfully kills a couple of slow ones (fat, sluglike, crawling on their bellies) but gets overwhelmed by the fast ones (the regular rage zombies) and both he and his dad are chased back to their island by an "alpha" - bigger, stronger and slightly smarter than the other infected.  Back home, however, his mum (Jodie Comer) is worse and Spike devises a plan to sneak back to the mainland with her to confer with a nearby crazy doctor (Ralph Fiennes).

Are there gross and scary rage zombies?  Yes.  Does the alpha like to pull the heads off of people and animals?  Yes.  Was I at ever time scared of the infected or worried that our heroes might not make it?  No, not at all.  27YL is not actually scary.  It's more like an Alice in Wonderland/Wizard of Oz journey for Spike and his mum, wandering through beautiful landscapes and meeting really weird and/or dangerous people.  I loved it, although it isn't the zombie movie that most people were expecting.  And the very ending fell a little flat, as it is clearly setting things up for the next film.  But this was not what I thought I was going to be seeing and I appreciated it all the more for that.

Sixteenth Annual FMS Scarelicious October Movie Series: #7 Fear Street: Prom Queen

 Oops!  Missed a couple of days - was trying for the every other day posting thing - sorry.  And, unfortunately, this one won't have been worth waiting for.  I REALLY need to get myself a Shudder subscription because the mainstream horror streamers have been uninspiring, to say the least.  I was poking around on Netflix (having recently given up our Hulu/Disney/HBO scrip and being unwilling to sign my "smart tv" onto my Amzn account for the Prime offerings): I'm fixing to dive into the new 28 Years this weekend but needed a midweek watch.  And I landed on Fear Street: Prom Queen.  

I've watched a couple other of these R.L. Stine Fear Streets.  I know they're for the tweens.  I've never read any of the books and I don't know if it's important to have seen all of the Fear Street movies - I suspect not, but I also think there were some callbacks/references that I missed.  Regardless, I have been in the mood for some 80s horror and this was ... sort of that.

Set in 1988, at the Shadyside High School prom, we've got a slasher flick whose masked killer is working his/her way through the prom queen candidates, and their dates, and a whole bunch of adjacent fodder.  The plot is pretty simple: a mean girl, her coterie and an outsider are all in the running for Prom Queen.  The outsider has family baggage and a weird BFF, but used to be friends with - and now has a crush on - the mean girl's boyfriend.  A whole bunch of people get hacked to pieces - mad props to the guillotine paper cutter! - and SPOILER the outsider girl does actually get to be Prom Queen.

Look, at the risk of aging myself, I literally was the class of 1988.  And my high school/prom looked nothing like this.  Budget is probably an issue but at best, the costuming was a combination 80s/90s.  The music was okay but the hair was way off.  Kudos to nabbing Lili Taylor, Chris Klein and Katherine Waterston to play the adults.

In a nutshell, not a complete waste of time: meh acting, decent body count/gore, not scary.

Sixteenth Annual FMS Scarelicious October Movie Series: #6 The Blackening

 Actually, I tried to watch I Saw the TV Glow first.  I failed.  It was stylish and vibey and a little creepy.  But it was also SO SLOW that I got tired of falling asleep in the middle of it and gave up.

So, The Blackening instead, which is not at all slow but a very clever, very funny horror comedy.  You know the horror trope where the black character gets killed first in the slasher movie?  Well, the black main characters know it too:  "We can't all die first."

The plot is that a group of college friends reunite ten years after graduation, going to a cabin (pretty fancy cabin) in the woods for card and board games, drinking, party drugs and catching up.  Once they get there, however, they are targeted by a racistly-masked, crossbow-carrying bad guy who starts picking them off.  What happens next is a rapid fire, hilarious and also true-feeling demonstration of black culture and black horror film culture.  The cast knows the assignment and has tremendous chemistry; the pacing is brisk.  The Blackening isn't at all scary but it is massively entertaining.

Sixteenth Annual FMS Scarelicious October Movie Series: #5 The Monkey

 As noted here before, Stephen King adaptations are hit or miss, despite how good his books are.  His short story collection, Skeleton Crew, out in a fortieth (!) anniversary edition, contains three stories that have been made into movies: The Mist, done by Frank Darabont, a strong showing with an even more brutal ending than the story; and The Raft, the best and grossest part of Creepshow 2.  And now comes the third, The Monkey, by Oz Perkins, in an absolute departure from that director's usual oeuvre.  

Here's what the movie has in common with the short story: brothers Hal and Bill; and a toy monkey that is a harbinger/brings about death, including orphaning the brothers.  What's different? Pretty much everything else, from the monkey having a drum (instead of cymbals), to Bill being a huge asshole and Hal hating him, to Hal's son Petey being a complete dickhead, to the sheer number of deaths, to how they end up getting rid of the monkey.

This is not the worst SK adaptation but it doesn't rank up there with the better ones.  Perkins has made a gleefully mean-spirited little flick, clearly relishing the opportunity to not be as moody as his prior movies.  There is a nice callback via naming the brothers' babysitter Annie Wilkes.  Some of the kills are clever and funny (lawnmower, tea kettle, snake, vape, wasps and an excellent schoolbus situation).  The Monkey isn't scary and while there are funny bits, it isn't a horror-comedy - the tone just seems a little uneven.  Nice mix of actors: Theo James, Adam Scott, Tatiana Maslany, Elijah Wood and Oz Perkins himself as "Uncle Chip."

Sixteenth Annual FMS Scarelicious October Movie Series: #4 Final Destination: Bloodlines

 You know, I don't know if I've actually ever watched any of the Final Destination movies.  Maybe the first one, ages and ages ago.  And I've certainly seen that iconic log truck disaster scene from #2.  But from what I've read, as the series went on, it largely devolved into one splashy/grisly Rube Goldberg sequence after another.  I'd had some recommendations for the latest installment, FD:B, and thought I'd give it a go.

PLOT SPOILERS AHEAD.  The opener has young Iris and her fella, Paul, enjoying opening night at the new Skyview Tower (think Seattle Spaceneedle).  It doesn't go all that well, although better than it could have due to Iris's premonition that enables her to save folks.  But anyone who has seen a FD movie knows that you can't cheat Death.  Iris manages to survive for decades, hidden and paranoid, but then Death comes for her, picking off not only her but - because Iris was pregnant at the time of the Skyview incident - also all her descendants because they aren't supposed to exist.  Carnage ensues.  

The cold open disaster is pretty operatic, with both CGI and practicall effects.  The subsequent kills are very bloody and creative, some squirm-laugh-inducing and sometimes just squirm-inducing.  While it certainly sticks to the formula that made the series famous, FD:B is fun, splashily gory, funny and shows sparks of heart, including a poignant send-off to Tony Todd in his last on-screen role.  Dunno if I'll seek out the rest of them, but this most recent one is worth the time.

Sixteenth Annual FMS Scarelicious October Movie Series: #2 Heart Eyes

 I have a friend from grade school (!!!!) who has been urging me to watch Heart Eyes.  We both love horror movies, and although they have a higher tolerance for jump scares and really nasty stuff than I do, and they didn't like Midsommar (!!!?!), I tend to seek out their recommendations.  It's on Netflix, for those interested.

The movie dives right into it: over the past couple of years, a serial killer has been targeting couples on Valentine's Day in different cities.  Now it's February 14 in Seattle, and the ol' Heart Eyes Killer (or "HEK" for short) is at it again, making mincemeat of a couple in their tacky, staged "surprise" proposal at a local winery.  The bride-to-be gets squishy in a grape press, to good effect.  Oh.  Spoiler.

Going on at the same time, Alli is struggling in her advertising job and her ruthless boss has brought in a ringer, Jay.  Of course, just before the big meeting, Alli and Jay have a meet-cute in a coffee shop, so things are awkward.  Jay asks Ally out for dinner so they can work on the replacement ad pitch and while they're there, HEK picks them out for murderin'.  "But we're not a couple!" they shriek, as the maniac chases them.

Heart Eyes is pretty cute for a horror film, billed as a horror rom-com.  While it isn't scary or even at all tense, some of the kills are pretty bloody.  I thought the killer's mask was cool with its light-up eyes.  I liked the female lead and it was nice to see Devon Sawa and Jordana Brewster pop up as detectives investigating the Seattle HEK murders, in callbacks to some late 90s/early 00s horror (Final Destination and The Faculty, respectively.

Sixteenth Annual FMS Scarelicious October Movie Series: #1 Longlegs

We ended last year's October movie series with a Nicolas Cage movie and by heck we're going to start this year's off with one too!

After young FBI agent Lee Harker (Maika Monroe, from It Follows) has an accurate and unusual hunch right before her partner gets killed, she gets reassigned to a serial killer case.  The senior agent (Blair Underwood) is hoping her sixth sense will help them solve the string of ten different families being murdered under very strange circumstances.  More than that, Harker finds that she is connected to the case, which is confirmed by a recently re-awakened mental patient (Kiernan Shipka) and Harker's own mother (Alicia Witt), who seems just this side of disturbed herself.

Nicolas Cage plays Longlegs, the Big Bad (NOT A SPOILER), of course.  He is nearly unrecognizable under the make-up and he is very creepy.  Maika Monroe is terrific: tense, angular, innocent, awkward, horrified, contained.

Written and directed by Osgood Perkins (Psycho's Anthony Perkins's kid), Longlegs is unsettling,  moody, slowly paced and weird as fuck, punctuated with startling bursts of violence.  Oz Perkins is making a name for himself with sophisticated, uber-atmospheric horror: see also The Blackcoat's Daughter, I Am the Pretty Thing That Lives in the House, Gretel & Hansel).  And this one is at the top of the list. 

July reads

 Of the nine books I read in July, I really liked three of them and didn't hate any.  That's pretty good, right?

• Sunshine by Robin McKinley.  Magical humans, conflicted vampires, delicious pastry - I loved this award-winning fantasy.
• Just the Nicest Couple by Mary Kubica.  Since I had mostly liked Local Woman Missing, I thought I'd try another one by Kubica.  Didn't like this thriller as much but it was okay.  (Spoiler: they're not really the nicest.)
• The Butcher's Daughter by Corinne Leigh Clark and David Demchuk.  The "hitherto untold story of Mrs. Lovett," from Sweeney Todd.  I thought this was great fun, grim and dire and funny and bloody.
• Phaedra by Laura Shepperson.  There sure do seem to be a lot of new novels retelling/re-interpreting Greek myths these days.  I used to be obsessed with Greek mythology growing up so I am enjoying revisiting the stories this way.  This novel is a much more woman-positive retelling of Phaedra's story than most.
• William by Mason Coile.  This novella is part of my local library's summer reading program so I just picked it up on a whim.  Psychological horror + robots.  Not my favorite but it wasn't long.
• Nettle and Bone by T. Kingfisher.  This is the third one that I just loved, a fantasy/fairy tale about the third daughter who must complete impossible tasks to save her older sister from an evil husband.  What it really is about, however, is found family.
• Thornhedge by T. Kingfisher.  Another fairy tale, this time a hero-swapped version of Sleeping Beauty.  
• The Familiar by Leigh Bardugo.  A historical fantasy, set in Madrid during the Spanish Inquisition, this one focuses on Luzia, a Jewish servant who has to hide both her faith and her magic.  Most online reviews describe this one as a "slow burn," and I would agree with that; it took me a while to get into it but I was down for the ride by the end.
• Survivor by Tabitha King.  (Yes, TK is Stephen King's wife.)  After an automobile accident, Kissy Mellors's life is changed irrevocably.  This one felt like it could have used some ruthless editing.  There's no real plot to speak of, just meandering along through the protagonists' lives; Kissy (oh god I hate that name) makes terrible, inexplicable decisions about men and has lots of fairly explicit s3x (which is fine, but just be warned); and the very ending seems abrupt and from a totally different book.  Meh.

Fifteenth Annual FMS Scarelicious October Movie Series: #17 Mandy

Editorial note: I watched this one because my name is Amanda, although I do not like the nickname "Mandy" for myself.  But I felt I was honor-bound to check this one out.

Red (Nicolas Cage) and Mandy (Andrea Riseborough) live a peaceful life in a cabin in the woods.  She is an artist and he is a lumberjack, proficient with a chainsaw.  This will be important later.  They have a close relationship, they talk to each other.  Their cabin is awesome.  It all comes apart when Jeremiah, the leader of a hippy-ish religious cult, takes a shine to Mandy and decides to add her to his harem.  The cult invades the cabin, drugging her and beating the snot out of him.  When the out-of-it Mandy laughs at Jeremiah, however, they kill her - horribly - right in front of Red.

And now comes the unhinged Cage everyone was waiting for.  He frees himself, sources a crossbow and forges his own axe (which, to be honest, looks like the one from BtVS S7).  First he takes out the demon (?) biker gang that helped Jeremiah, then he does some coke and LSD.  And then he goes after Jeremiah's little cult.

This too-long, weird fuckin' movie is unlike anything I think I've ever seen.  Described as an "action-horror-dark fantasy," it is very darkly lit and difficult to see at times.  The first half, even when Red and Mandy are happy, seems ominous.  It's been compared to the visualization of a heavy metal album, where the dark and foreboding first half is Red and Mandy's descent into hell, and the second half is Red's blood-soaked journey back.  It is very, very violent and bloody, but almost cartoonishly at times: there is a chainsaw fight.  The musical score is fantastic and adds a lot to the movie.  And there's one scene with Cage alone in his bathroom that, while seemingly over the top, is actually really well acted.  He is a man destroyed.

Fifteenth Annual FMS Scarelicious October Movie Series: #16 Smile

Another newish horror movie!  These just aren't my usual jam but I read that the brand new Smile 2 is even better, so I thought I should watch the OG first.

Dr. Rose Cotter, a psychiatrist at an emergency psych clinic, gets a new, quite disturbed patient. Laura is seeing things - a being that speaks to her whilst wearing other people's forms and smiling terribly.  Laura has a psychotic break and kills herself horribly, right in front of Rose, dying with a rictus smile on her face.  Rose is understandably freaked and her boss (played by Kal Penn) tells her to take a week to rest and recover. She does, but then she starts seeing things: people smiling terribly at her, telling her terrible things.  She doesn't know if it's family history of mental illness coming through or something else even worse.  SPOILER ALERT: it's worse.

Rose starts seeing smilers everywhere.  She can't trust herself or other people and all her relationships - fiance, family, work, her own therapist - start to suffer.  The only person who halfway believes her is ex-BF Joel (played by Kyle Gallner) who is a cop.  Rose convinces Joel to do some research and they find that this whatever it is seems to be spread by trauma: an "infected" person kills themselves in front of a witness, and the infection spreads to that witness.  And repeat.  Kind of like It Follows without the s3x.

Smile was pretty good and plenty scary; for me, I ended up not watching a bunch of it, either taking my glasses off or peeking out from behind my fingers, especially when Rose was alone in her house at night.  After The Empty Man, I need to take a break from movies where scary things rush out at people from the dark.  Give me monsters!  That said, I will definitely be watching the sequel when I can get it.

Fifteenth Annual FMS Scarelicious October Movie Series: #15 The Empty Man

 Well, that was weird.  

The Hulu thumbnail said TEM was about a midwestern ex-cop who realizes that people's disappearances may have a supernatural bent to them.  So right away I was confused when for the first twenty or so minutes we were with underprepared Americans trekking in Bhutan in 1995.  One of them falls into a cave and when they find him, he is dazed, staring at a decidedly inhuman skeleton.  They drag him out, nearly comatose, and hole up in a nearby house while a storm rages.  His girlfriend finds a bone whistle clutched in his hand and, in the ways of stupid horror movie people, gives it a blow (not a euphemism).  Things go from bad to worse and let me just refrain from too specific spoilers by saying not everyone makes off that mountain alive.

And then we're in 2018 Missouri where nice and helpful ex-cop James Iforgethislastname (played by James Badge Dale, so we'll just go with "James") starts investigating some unusal events.  A group of teenagers play the "Empty Man game" - which is kind of like the Bloody Mary game only involves blowing across an empty bottle (KIND OF LIKE BLOWING ON A CREEPY BONE WHISTLE, EH?).  One girl disappears entirely; five kids more hang themselves under a bridge; and the last one has the world's most unrelaxing spa day.

There's also a doomsday cult and the front man is played by Stephen Root.

The Empty Man was recommended to me by my work friend Spencer: he and I have very similar pop culture tastes (he actually became my library when the public libraries were shut down in 2020, loaning me whole bags of books that I absolutely devoured), including loving horror films.  We do differ a bit: he doesn't love zombies the way I do; and he has a much higher tolerance for jump scares than I do.  He recommended TEM to me and I had to wait for a weekend viewing as, at 2+ hours, it's too long for midweek.

Spencer did mention that he felt this movie "had a lot going on towards the end" and boy oh boy.  Yes.  A very lot.  And it did seem to shift tonally throughout, and tried to be a more cerebral horror film than it really is.  There was a funny moment, when James was spying on the cultists who had just finished dancing around a bonfire, but otherwise it was rather self-serious.  Still, it's good for me to branch out, try something other than my beloved 1980s slashers.  Plus this movie came out in 2020 and didn't get much love then.  Let's give it what we can now.

Fifteenth Annual FMS Scarelicious October Movie Series: #14 Lisa Frankenstein

Set in the late 1980s, written by Diablo Cody, directed by Robin Williams's daughter, Zelda Williams, and starring Kathryn Newton, Cole Sprouse and a wicked Carla Gugino, Lisa Frankenstein is a delightful, frothy confection with a dark heart.  

After the wonderful animated opening credits fill you in on some backstory, we are introduced to Lisa (Newton).  She's a new student, in a new school, with a new evil stepmother (Gugino) and supportive stepsister, after her mother was brutally axe-murdered.  She's withdrawn (despite the cheerful and earnest attempts of stepsister Taffy to include Lisa in her social circle), preferring to spend her days in an abandoned Victorian era graveyard.  Lisa especially likes the stone bust of a young man's monument, wishing she could join him.  

She means in death - but when a freak electrical storm strikes the gravestone, the young man (Sprouse) arises from his grave and goes to find Lisa.  After her initial shock wears off, she cleans him up; later, he returns the favor, revamping her wardrobe towards a more goth vibe.  A likely friendship arises, as Lisa realizes she needs someone to talk to about her mother.  And then they go on a bit of a murder spree, to replace the monster's missing ear, hand ... and other body parts.

There's shades of/homages to She's All That and Edward Scissorhands and even Heathers here, with the quips and the makeovers and the awkwardness and the murders.  It's quite cute and funny - Cole Sprouse is very funny as the monster - with occasional bloody bits (PG-13 rating).  I enjoyed it quite a lot as a solid return to pro-girl horror-comedy for Diablo Cody (long live Jennifer's Body!)

 

Fifteenth Annual FMS Scarelicious October Movie Series: #12 The Vampire Lovers and #13 Vampire Circus

 It's Hammer [Films] time!  I'm combining both Hammer films into one post because.  Well, because I want to.  It's certainly not because I watched Vampire Circus weeks ago, wrote notes for a review and then lost the notes and forgot to post the review.  Certainly not that.

1970's The Vampire Lovers has Hammer Films' beloved, Peter Cushing, in it.  He gets top billing but he's not on screen all that often.  In any event, in the late 1700s, somewhere in Europe (Bavaria, maybe?), there are vampires in the village.  They've got a neat set-up, orchestrated by the main vamp, a tall, pale dude in a top hat, who lurks around and laughs, but not much else: a familiar, "the Countess," installs her vampire "daughter," who goes by Carmilla, Marcela, and other names, into local gentry's homes.  Carmilla seduces and drains any nubile daughter, killing or turning them, and then flounces on to the next home.  There's quite a lot of screaming and nekkid 70s breasts, but it's pretty slow.  Cushing and a small gang of townsmen end up staking Carmilla to end the vampiric menace.

1972's Vampire Circus uses the same castle backdrop as TVL does, which is funny.  In this one, set earlier than TVL, a village is isolated from its surroundings since there's a bit of plague floating around and none of then neighboring towns wants their germs.  A roving circus arrives, giving the village some entertainment.  But the circus folk are vampires and their familiars, in town to attempt to resurrect the main vamp who was defeated by the villagers years and years ago.  These vampires have HUGE fangs (no a euphemism).  This flick is terrifically campy (the attack by the black panther is obviously crew members tossing a big stuffed animal at the actors) but with some decent special effects.  It's also kind of lowkey 70s sexy, which is, I guess, a Hammer hallmark.

Fifteenth Annual FMS Scarelicious October Movie Series: #11 George Romero Presents: Deadtime Stories Vol. 2

 WHY DO I INSIST ON DOING THIS TO MYSELF?  Because I am a sucker for anthologies.  I was looking for The ABCs of Death but that was too long for a weeknight, so I ended up with this.  Aside from the charming little George Romero snippets before and after each story, this flick should be a hard pass.  I watched it for you because apparently I like to suffer.

First story: "The Gorge" - Three friends go caving in the wintertime.  There's a cave in and one of them gets badly injured, although none are unscathed.  No one knows where they are but a rescue finally shows up after about a month, when someone finally noticed their car parked at the trail head.  By then, the two survivors had eaten the third guy.  And things don't actually look up after the rescue.  The sound levels are bad [throughout all three stories, actually] and the music is jarring.  The acting is bad.  The chick's hair looks awfully clean after being trapped in a cave for a month.  This is slow and dumb but at least it's really GROSS.

Second story: "On Sabbath Hill" - A married college professor is having an affair with one of his students.  He gets her pregnant and is a dick about it, so she offs herself in his classroom in front of everybody.  Then she haunts him.  The acting is bad, the whole thing seems very amateurish.  This is slow until the "birth" scene, which is gross (but not as gross as story #1).

Third story: "Dust" - A security guard at a high security research lab has a wife dying from cancer.  The lab is testing "Mars dust" and is finding that it may have curative properties.  The guard steals some and doses his wife; for about twelve hours she is 100% cured and also a bit of a s3x maniac.  So he steals the rest of it, killing the research scientist in the process - and lol knocking his eyeball out in the process.  Of course, no one knows, or could even guess, about the side effects of consuming "Mars dust."  The high security lab is TOTALLY filmed in a high school chemistry lab.  And this is the best story of the three, which really isn't saying much.

Fifteenth Annual FMS Scarelicious October Movie Series #10: Pearl

 There's a bit of a disclaimer here, as I haven't seen the first film, X, in this Ti West series.  While I know the connection between the films, I don't think that X is a prerequisite for Pearl, and I was in the mood to watch something good.  I like the two Ti West movies I've seen - House of the Devil and The Innkeepers - so I figured Pearl was a safe bet.

Set in 1918, Pearl (the fantastic Mia Goth) is stuck on the family farm after her husband goes off to war.  She is lonely and isolated, with the country in the grip of the Spanish flu pandemic, with her father stricken and combined to a wheelchair and her mother bitter, cold and cruel in the face of what her life has become.  Pearl dreams of being a star, a dancer for the Follies, and goes to the movies as often as she can to distract herself from her own disturbing thoughts.  And actions, if her mother is to be believed - which she can, as early on, Pearl kills an innocent goose and feeds its carcass to the neighborhood alligator.

Note: I was very distracted by the alligator.  I couldn't place Pearl's accent, and with the corn fields I assumed the movie was set somewhere in the midwest.  Where there are no wild alligators.  But online research sets the movie in Texas and, yes, Virginia, there are wild alligators in that state.

Pearl strikes up a relationship with the movie projectionist in town.  I thought he was sleazy; he called himself "bohemian."  Between him and a dance troupe audition, Pearl has high hopes for fleeing her depressing, limiting life.  But after a fight with her mother, things unravel fast. 

Ti West is so good at atmosphere and mood, building suspense despite the cheerful music and absolutely no reason to expect tension.  And Mia Goth is amazing: expressive and emotionally turning on a dime.  Her lengthy monologue to her sister-in-law is incredible  And watching her hold that final rictus grin over the closing credits was truly awesome - creepy, heartbreaking and terrifying in turn.