31 DAYS OF HALLOWEEN 2021!

Normally, I love to try and watch at least thirty-one new horror films during October in celebration of Halloween but October 2021 I was not able to do this as I was also watching a bunch of TV shows during the month as well (I actually enjoyed this more than catching up with the horror films that I had missed throughout the year).  So, I am a little disappointed that I was only able to watch about fifteen horror films during the month but some of these films were the very best I’d seen all year.

 

I’d like to first take a look back to some of the older films I viewed during the month.  The only film I had already seen was The Wraith (1986) which was one of my favorite films of the ’80s and which still holds up extremely well today.  I still love this film!  I also (finally) got around to watching Buried Alive II (1997).  I had already watched the first film earlier in the year.  These were films I just never got around to.  I also watched Nightflyers (1987), The Ladies Club (1986), and Deadly Games (1982).  I generally hated the recent TV series of Nightflyers and this ‘80s film was just a derivative but at least it wasn’t drawn out like the series.  I just did not like the story which is based on a sci-fi novella by G.R.R. Martin.  It did star Catherine Mary Stewart which is the only plus in my opinion.  Deadly Games was completely forgettable and derivative of other ‘80s horror films but it was The Ladies Club which was the big surprise.  The Ladies Club, which is more a thriller, was actually better than I expected as it is a smart and provocative thriller whose themes of rape and abuse are still relevant today for women.

 

The oldest film that I happened to view is the 1976 film Schizo from director Pete Walker, one of the directors whose films I was watching in October and November.  This happened to be the only horror film of his that I ended up viewing as I was catching up with his sex comedies (which he also did a lot of).  Walker is one of those unusual directors whose filmography is mostly horror films and sex comedies – two genres on opposite sides of the spectrum.  I love his style of film-making and this is just as good as other films in his filmography.

 

I caught up with some more recent horror films Voice From the Stone (2017), Gwen (2018), Downrange (2017), Still/Born (2018), and Superdeep (2020).  Voice From the Stone was a pretty average film but it was Emilia Clarke that was the true standout and made it worthwhile whereas Downrange had a pretty basic plot that was made better by the cinematography and suspense as it was a non-stop film in the tradition of thrillers like Joy Ride (2001), Duel (1971), and Breakdown (1997).  Gwen was another mediocre film but it had a lot of atmosphere and strong performances for a slow burn folk film.  Still/Born wasn’t much better as I ended up with a lot of ambitious horror films that had a lot of atmosphere and great cinematography but were not always all that good.  On the other hand, Superdeep was a fun and entertaining Lovecraftian horror film that took a lot of its inspiration from John Carpenter’s The Thing.  Although not a great film it was entertaining and engaging.

 

I do want to take a few moments to make comment about the lost George A. Romero film The Amusement Park (2021) which audiences finally get to see.  This is not entirely a horror film but it is a mindfuck of a film that more a David Lynch film in the tradition of Romero’s early films Season of the Witch (1972) and There’s Always Vanilla (1971).  If you’re a fan of these early films then this film will be a great treat but if you’re not familiar with Romero’s less popular films then this film may leave you wanting more. 

 

The last group of films that I want to include is one of the best horror trilogies put out in a long time and they were released weekly via Netflix.  Fear Street Part 1: 1994 (2021), Fear Street Part 2: 1978 (2021), and Fear Street Part 3: 1666 (2021). Utilizing the same cast members in various roles, the films do an amazing job of linking multiple characters and timelines in a story that’s both entertaining, suspenseful, and at times horrifying.  I was never bored and watched all three in a single day.  The performances from the young cast are exceptionally well done as are all other production elements.  These films are some of the best horror films released in ’21.

 

I did catch up with two TV series this month – Black Summer (Season 2) and Holliston (Season 2).  Black Summer has some amazing production value and the winter setting was a great touch but the show is just too fragmented due to the frequent cutting back and forth between so many characters and so many stories.  The best episodes were character episodes where there were just a handful of characters.  This show has the same problem that The Walking Dead has where the character episodes are better than most other episodes in general.  The show also suffers from characters who repeatedly make dumb decisions and most of the characters are not likable or even interesting.  Holliston, on the other hand, was a vast improvement over the first season as you can tell that the writers finally knew how to tell the stories (and jokes) that best fit the actors.  This was a strong second season and I wished that the show had been able to do a third.

 

This is all for my viewing habits for October 2021!  Not as many as I would have liked and I saw a lot of mediocre films but watching horror films during October is never a bad thing!  Can’t wait until October 2022!

Film Review: DIRE WOLF (2009)

I’m not a big fan of director Fred Olen Ray but he has a lot of films behind him of which Dire Wolf (2009) is just one of them.  I wasn’t expecting much from this film but I must say I was pleasantly surprised.   The film is written by Dan Golden and Patrick Moran and for the most part is a solid-monster-escapes-laboratory-and-wreaks-havoc-on-small-town film.  In this case science has decided to splice the human DNA with that of a dire wolf.  When the creature awakens from its sleep it escapes the lab into the open world and kills just about everyone in its path.  The only person that can stop it is Sheriff Parker (a superb Maxwell Caulfield) and his son and several special agents who were sent in to capture the science-gone-amok creature alive.

The monster kills and a lot of people die in gruesome fashion as fitting a good horror film.  Horror fans will delight in the chaos and bloodshed on display in the film despite the very familiar storyline but it is Caulfield as the Sheriff who really shines.  He runs his police office like something out of David Lynch’s Twin Peaks adding a bit of originality and humor to the film.  By the end of the film I was wishing for the Sheriff to get his own TV series from the same town where bad things just always happen but the Sheriff will get to it in his own time.

This being said the rest of the film is pretty standard stuff but its standard stuff done very well and therefore will entertain you from beginning to end.  Now if you can’t stand the cliché monster film then this is definitely not the film for you but if you enjoy a good cup of coffee with your monster movie then this film just might be what you’re looking for.

Film Review: SERVANTS OF TWILIGHT (1991)

The novels of Dean R. Koontz have amassed as big a cult following as Stephen King and like King many of his novels have been adapted to film with varying degrees of success.  Servants of Twilight (1991) is adapted from Koontz’ novel “Twilight” and stars Bruce Greenwood as Charlie Harrison, a private detective who is hired by Christine Scavello (Belinda Bauer) to protect her son Joey (Jarrett Lennon) from a fanatical cult that believes that he is the Anti-Christ reborn. 

As bodies keep piling up around Charlie he must decide how far he is willing to protect Christine and her son when everywhere they turn they are hounded and hunted down by the cult and their leader Grace Spivey (Grace Zabriskie) who knows there every turn.  As tension mounts, Charlie finds himself getting closer to Christine and he finds it harder to keep his perspective as Spivey and her followers will stop at nothing to kill Joey and anyone that gets in their way.

There is no real mystery to the film although the road trip chase film scenario works really well keeping the film following at a brisk pace and the tense and suspense high.  It there is any real problem with the film it is that the Twilight cult that Spivey runs comes off as fanatics and cartoonish but Zabriskie knows how t o play this up having come from David Lynch’s Twin Peaks.  This film has actually aged better than some of the other Koontz adapted films and movies about the Anti-Christ (i.e. The Omen franchise and Rosemary’s Baby) usually age better than expected.

Film Review: TWIXT (2011)

Between The Rainmaker (1997) and Youth Without Youth (2007) director Francis Ford Coppola has mostly stayed to producing films.  Since Youth Without Youth he has been directing a new film every two years including Tetro (2009) and Twixt (2011).  Each new film that he does is Coppola finding new ways to tell different types of stories that are not typical.  Twixt is Coppola’s way of trying to tell an old story in new way. 

Hall Baltimore (Val Kilmer) is an aging writer of supernatural novels who is on a book store.  He finds his way into a small town that’s a stop on his tour that also happens to be the location of a notorious murder.  Just as Baltimore is leaving town Sheriff Bobby LaGrange (Bruce Dern) comes up to him wanting to know if he would like to collaborate with him on a new novel that involves the town’s latest murder victim.  It seems that the body of an unknown girl has been found with a wooden stake in her chest.  Needing something new to write about Baltimore agrees to the collaboration but soon discovers that the only way to find the “real” story is to go into a deep dreamlike state where he meets odd characters of the town including a goth-like young girl by the name of V (Elle Fanning) and Edgar Allen Poe (Ben Chaplin) who will help him find his new novel that will put him back on the map.

Twixt is Coppola trying to channel his inner David Lynch by way of Twin Peaks but the film is not filled with any interesting characters nor does Kilmer’s Baltimore make for as interesting a main focus as Kyle MacLauchlan’s Special Agent Dale Cooper.  The overuse of CGI in the dream sequences leaves a lot to be desired.  This is a lesser film from the director whose glory days such as The Godfather (1972) and Apocalypse Now (1979) seem far in the distant past.

Book Review: Inside Teradome: An Illustrated History of Freak Film by Jack Hunter

The “freak” film is a sub genre of horror film that has mostly been over looked by modern audiences but it was once something far more common place in the 50’s to 70’s.  Nowadays most audiences only know of the auteur works of John Waters (Pink Flamingoes & Female Troubles) or David Lynch (Eraserhead & The Elephant Man) and the early films of David Cronenberg (Dead Ringers & Shivers) but there is a history of freak film that stretches across continents and genres and cultures and that is what Jack Hunter’s book Inside Teradome: An Illustrated History of Freak Film delves into.

In order to under the freak film you must define what it is and what types of films are included and that is exactly what Hunter does with the first half of the book (while the second part focuses on the films themselves and the film makers behind them).  For those who don’t know (and generally speaking I was one of those people at first) the so-called freak film includes not only films about people or cultures with abnormal ways of life but also those who live such a life and have taken up the film industry as there profession.  As described by Hunter, “The ultimate strain of bizarre cinema, a psycho-sexual fusion of the grotesque and perverse, haunted by primal specters of deformity and mutilation.”  The book focuses mostly on Tod Browning’s Freaks (1932) because this is not only a film that featured so-called real life “freaks” and circus performers but it also portrayed them in a sympathetic light as opposed to the “normal” people in the film.  It is through the initial failure of this film (it did more or less kill Brownings career in films) and it’s now infamous undying cult status that Hunter explores the culture and importance of this genre of film.

The first part of the book describes all real manner of freaks such as those that suffered from all types of genetic maladies (as could be seen in the circuses up until the 70s) as well as those through mutation (due to the bomb) or war (mostly WWI vets who were disfigured).  The book does go into the fall of the freak film as SFX in cinema began to rival anything that could have been seen in the real world.  Hunter not only describes all of the maladies but has also put together an amazing collection of photos from all over the word (and illustrations and drawings as well) to show just how real some of these people suffered in their real lives only to replay them in front of a camera.

The second part of the book focuses on the film makers and films that embraced this type of taboo material from the before mentioned films of John Waters to the more obscure films of Alejandro Jodorowsky (El Topo and Santa Sangre) Werner Herzog (Even Dwarfs Start Small) and actors such as Michael Berryman (The Hills Have Eyes, Deadly Blessing) and Rondo Hatton (Jungle Captive, House of Horrors).

Hunter does an excellent job of presenting these films in way that will give readers an understanding of why they were so popular at one time in history and why there popularity has dwindled over the years to the point of having almost all but been forgotten.   For those interested in this genre of film this is a great book to get you started.