We did it, Joe! We made it through all 31 days of this countdown! I can hardly believe it myself.
And what am I going to do now that it's actually Halloween, and I don't have any more movies to post about? Go see another movie, of course!
I hope however you choose to spend your Halloween, it's fun, spooky, and includes some candy.
Thanks again to all who have stopped by this blog this month. I also hope I helped you discover some good things to watch, or some bad things to avoid.
If you have any interest in reading what I think of more current films, you can find me the rest of the year on Rotten Tomatoes, or at my review site, Mulling Movies. I am also an avid Letterboxd user, and usually have something to say over there about everything I watch.
I'm already looking forward to next year's Countdown, which will mark my 20th (!!!) year participating. Until then, you can find a list of all the movies in this year's countdown below, with links to their posts.
Best wishes for the holidays ahead, and an excellent 2027!
As per tradition I am ending this Halloween countdown with something brand new, but this time it isn't a movie. It's Mike Flanagan's Carrie TV series, currently streaming on Prime. (The last two films in this countdown are beginning to make more sense now, aren't they?)
Warning upfront: this contains some mild spoilers, so if this series is something you want to watch and be completely surprised by, please stop reading now. (But be sure to come back and let me know what you thought after you watch it!)
The 1976 version of Carrie is my favorite Brian De Palma movie, and one of my favorite movies, period. I watch it almost every year. In fact, I saw it in a theater for its 50th anniversary just a few months ago. I don't think any adaptation will ever top it.
But any complaints I have about this new series are not based in comparison. This version is not a remake of the movie. It's an adaptation that includes some aspects of the original novel the 1976 version omitted, and then adds a whole lot more on top of that.
One thing it takes from the book is the idea that this story is partially being told by survivors. Much of the book is written like an epistolary novel, so this adaptation spins off of that by opening with survivors being interviewed for some kind of video testimonial. But, frustratingly, this framing device is essentially dropped until the end of the series.
I do think it's smart to set the story now, and include what modern bullying can look like. In some ways, 1976 Carrie had it pretty good! At least when she was pelted with tampons and pads no one outside of that locker room saw it!
Summer H. Howell, who plays Carrie, is excellent. She's sweet, and awkward, and a tad annoying. And I'll say I don't have any problem with her being "too pretty" for the role, especially when her "ugliness" in the novel is simply based in her being chubby, shlubby, and acne prone. Plenty of lovely girls are bullied in life simply because they are different.
But I will say this Carrie is not quite different enough. Yes, she's sheltered, and a little weird. But she is such a sweet and sympathetic person that I had a hard time believing she would have ever been bullied as much as she is here. And it is a little tough to watch a character suffer, get her hopes up, only to again get crushed, over and over, which is what happens in an adaptation that's eight hours long.
And for an event that takes roughly eight hours to get to, the prom scene is oddly...anti-climatic? There is no burgeoning romance between Tommy and Carrie. He takes her to the prom (on his own volition) just to be nice, they dance, there is no kiss, and then the blood happens, he's knocked unconscious, and dies. But maybe the whole scene just feels rushed in comparison (oops, I said I wasn't going to do that!) to the 1976 version and its drawn out, slow motion fueled suspense.
It is in this final episode that the show really starts to veer off into new territory. Another aspect the show retains from the book is the idea that Carrie is not the only person in the world to demonstrate such powers. So there are new characters introduced in this final episode, and developments that imply this is just the beginning of something that will connect Carrie to a larger Stephen King Supernatural Universe. Or something. Which kind of feels like it's trying to be the new Stranger Things, but when you remember that Stranger Things owed a lot to Stephen King, I guess that just means we've come full circle.
Ultimately, I didn't hate this version of Carrie. But I'm not sure we need more of it.
Yesterday's Ruby was sort of a ripoff of The Exorcist with a bit of
Carrie tossed in. But Jennifer is just a full-fledged Carrie rip-off,
not doubt about it.
You have a religious teenager named Jennifer (Lisa Pelikan) who has moved to Los Angeles with her Pentecostal father. She attends an all-girls school on a scholarship, and is ostracized by the cool girls, lead by a blonde with a bowl cut (see photo above), named Sandra (Amy Johnston), who is jealous that the teacher she keeps flirting with (Burt Convy!) is actually kind to Jennifer.
Jennifer and her father fled the south and their snake-handling church after Jennifer accidentally killed a preacher's son with her telekinetic snake-handling powers. Which sure come in handy when you're being bullied at school!
So, yeah, this is basically Carrie but with snakes. And some pretty ridiculously large snakes at that. The finale has to be seen to be believed; I still haven't decided if it ruins the movie, or makes it amazing.
Also, amusingly, Lisa Pelikan looks more like Pier Laurie in Carrie than she does Sissy Spacek.
I mean, come on:
And finally, I have to warn you that there is a cute kitten in this that meets a gruesome end. Ironically, not via the jaws of a giant snake.
There is a good copy of Jennifer currently available on YouTube.
What do you mean Piper Laurie, fresh off her comeback roll as the mother of a telekinetic teenager in Carrie, a year later starred as the mother of a telekinetic teenager in a movie called Ruby??
Well, technically the teenager in Ruby isn't telekinetic so much as possessed by the spirit of her dead father, who was a gangster that had been gunned down in front of her pregnant mother, gangster's moll and lounge singer Ruby (Laurie). So it's less a rip-off of Carrie than it is of The Exorcist but still kind of crazy that Piper Laurie chose this as her Carrie follow-up.
That murder opens the movie, which starts in 1935, then jumps ahead sixteen years to 1951, where Ruby now runs a drive-in theater (which we see showing Attack of the 50-foot Woman, even though that movie didn't come out until 1958). Her employees are all ex-cons (including one played by Uncle Louie himself, Len Lesser). She shares her home with her mute daughter, Leslie Claire (Janit Baldwin, who looks like Bud Cort's long long twin sister), her lover, Vince (Stuart Whitman), and blind former mobster in a wheelchair, because why not.
Piper Laurie's performance in this is on par with the batshit vigor she imbued into Margaret White. Ruby can't let the past behind, forever lamenting the loss of her singing career, ready to burst into a song and dance routine at a moment's notice, especially since she had a stage built into in her house. She's giving Pearl energy, mixed with a bit of Oh, Mary! throughout.
Ruby is available to rent online. I watched via a free trial from a service called ScreamBox.
I decided to watch The Exorcist: Believer because I had just re-watched The Exorcist II: The Heretic in preparation for watching the documentary Boorman and the Devil, and realized, despite seeing all the other Exorcist sequel and prequel movies, I had not bothered with this one. Which is odd. Of course this one got terrible reviews, but so did those two prequelversions, and I watched both of those. So why did I skip this one, especially knowing that both Ellen Burstyn and Linda Blair make appearances in it?
I really don't have an answer to that aside from I think I just forgot that this one even existed!
Too bad it didn't stay that way.
It is truly not a good movie. David Gordon Green was building a career on franchise reboots (though I think Mike Flanagan may be taking over those reins, with his Carrie series, and his own upcoming Exorcist movie, which is looking like if Seven and The Exorcist had a baby), and I think Believer killed that trajectory. The two further sequels that were planned were killed after this movie tanked at the box office.
It's your basic Exorcist set-up, but this time with two teenage girls instead of one, and three different religions in on the exorcism, instead of just Catholics (though, spoiler, it takes a Catholic priest to get true results). There are some good actors in it, including Leslie Odom and Ann Dowd, but they can't save themselves from the silly script. And I hope Ellen Burstyn got a fat check for her small role because what she's put through in this one is brutal. Finally, for the record, The Exorcist III still holds the title as the only good Exorcist follow-up.
The 1976 psychological horror film The Premonition is filled with a cast of actors that will make you go "Hey! It's that guy!" The most notable is probably Richard Lynch, an actor instantly recognizable because of his burn-scarred face; he played villains in numerous 70's and 80's movies.
Here he plays Jude, an unhinged circus mime (the horrors!) with an even more unhinged, recently institutionalized girlfriend, Andrea (Ellen Barber, who definitely gives the role her all, and then some). Andrea is obsessed with finding her daughter, Janie (Danielle Brisebois), who had been placed in a foster home because of Andrea's inability to care for her. (No, I did not plan to list two foster kid centered horror movies in a row in this countdown. That was just a creepy coincidence!)
When Andrea tracks down Janie's fosters parents, Sheri (Sharon Farrell, also the mom in It's Alive), and Miles (Edward Bell, an actor I've definitely seen before but can't figure out in what), she begins to torture the mom, psychically, with dreams, phantom phone calls, and visions. Luckily, Miles happens to be a professor working with someone studying parapsychology!
This movie is verrrrrry 70's. It's slow. It's gritty. It's sometimes shocking. It's also a bit of a mess. It goes around in circles a lot, and there's one edit in it so abrupt and nonsensical I'm convinced it was an editing mistake no one ever caught, and it just remained in the film ever since. The ending is also a huge stretch.
All that said, I do think I liked it! It's well directed (for the most part), has good performances, and startled me more than once. Sometimes watching an old horror movie you've never heard of can be a drag because there's usually a reason you've never heard of it. This one deserves more recognition than it seems to have.
The Premonition is currently available to stream on Prime and Tubi.
I'm beginning to think that the fondness I have for Mike Flanagan, the person, sometimes overshadows what I think about Mike Flanagan, the filmmaker. He seems like a really nice guy who loves horror movies, loves to share his faves with his family and friends, and has a cast and crew that seem to also like him enough to work with him over and over again. I've never sat down to watch a movie of his with any reluctance.
I love that he clearly loves to make horror movies. But I'm coming to terms with the fact that I don't always love the horror movies he makes.
Before I Wakeis one of those. Like many of his films, it centers on a family dealing with trauma, in this case parents (Kate Bosworth and Thomas Jane) who are ready to welcome a new child into their lives after the tragic death of their son a few years earlier. Enter foster kid Cody (Jacob Tremblay, fresh off his role in the movie Room), who hasn't had a successful placement after multiple tries.
The parents soon learn about Cody's fear of sleeping, and begin to see weird things happening in their home when he does sleep, like beautiful butterflies filling their living room, and...the return of their dead son.
And then the real reason Cody is afraid of sleep makes itself known...
Before I Wake is in not a bad movie, but it is a familiar one, especially for those who have seen Mike Flanagan's other work. He is very good at creating creepy set-ups, and well-earned jump scares. He always gets great performances out of his cast (though Thomas Jane's haircut is a choice). But I think a lot of the time his endings make or break his movies and shows for me. And that holds true for this one.
Sugar Hillis a blaxploitation horror movie that's better than Blacula. Yeah, I said it!
Diana "Sugar" Hill (Marki Bey) hires a voodoo queen (Zara Cully) to help avenge the death of her boyfriend Langston (Larry D. Johnson) after he is murdered by the mob. The Lord of the Dead thusly springs to action, along with his army of zombies, who are actually the preserved bodies of slaves brought over from Guinea in the 1800's. Don't know how they were preserved! Don't wanna know! I do know they walk around encased in cobwebs, with bulbous silver eyes, and are genuinely creepy looking.
Sugar Hill is a Black heroine up there with Coffy and Foxy Brown, taking no shit from nobody. I mean, how can you not love a leading lady who says things like, "Hey whitey! You and your punk friends killed my man!" and, "I'm not accusing you, Honk. I'm passing sentence!" She's also got a lot of groovy costume changes and several wigs in rotation. Perfect.
In short, I highly recommend Sugar Hill, which can be viewed (with ads) via YouTube here.
You Should Have Left was one of those movies that was originally supposed to be a theatrical release, but due to the pandemic, was released as an on-demand rental instead, and I think it did pretty well. Probably better than it would have done had it been released in theaters, because it's not very good, and also because I bet a lot of the reviews would have used the sentence "you should have left the theater."
National treasure Amanda Seyfried stars as Susanna, a movie actress married to an older man, retired banker Theodore (Kevin Bacon). They have a young daughter, Ella (Avery Essex). It's a second marriage for Theodore, and there is some initial mystery surrounding how that first marriage ended. When the family takes a vacation to Wales, nightmares and weird goings on begin to haunt Theodore..
Seyfried and Bacon are engaging enough actors that I did find myself enjoying a lot of the movie. It's got some spooky moments in their vacation home, which reveals itself to be, literally, more than meets the eye. The scenery surrounding the home is also beautiful. But the ending gets a little muddled, with some aspects being painfully obvious, and others puzzling head-scratchers. I ultimately came away from it a little annoyed.
First off, when I say I watched the movie Embryo, I use the term "watched" loosely. The only version streaming online appears to be a 10th generation (at least) dupe of a VHS copy, possibly filmed while projected onto a sheet. But this is the movie my random watchlist selection told me to watch, so this is the movie I (tried) to watch!
It starts off rough, with Rock Hudson hitting a doberman whilst driving a dark road during a rain storm. At least I think that's what happens. I heard brakes screeching, and a dog whimpering, so assumed that's what led Hudson, who is playing a doctor, to bring a dog into his home lab and attempt to save its life.
The dog turns out to be pregnant, so Dr. Rock experiments with the fetuses, which turn into puppies seemingly overnight. Of course, the next logical step is to perform the same experiment on a pregnant woman who has conveniently died via suicide.
From there the movie basically turns into a Frankenstein story, with the baby rapidly growing up to be Barbara Carrera. Her only teacher is the doctor, and yet she learns to speak with an indeterminate accent that is definitely not Rock Hudson American. That the doctor also has sex with this surrogate daughter is a huge ick, but let's just say they don't live happily ever after.
Diane Ladd, Roddy McDowell, and Dr. Joyce Brothers (!) are also featured in some smaller roles. Definitely NOT worth watching in the form that's currently available to stream, and I have no idea if its sole DVD release was any better.
Appendage is like Basket Case meets Project Runway, witha dash of It's Alive, and a sprinkling of Rosemary's Baby. And a little bit of The Brood, to boot.
I guess what I'm saying is, Appendage is not the most original movie you will ever see, but it's got some fun moments in it.
Hadley Robinson stars as Hannah, a fashion designer's apprentice who one day finds a lump on her side that turns out to be a small monster - a small monster who's a total asshole, giving voice to all the insecurities in her head. Eventually she learns she's not the only person with such a monster, and they have an actual support group...
At first, because the tiny monster is such a dick, and pretty amateurish looking in its design, I figured this would end up being a full-fledged comedy. And while it definitely is funny at times, after a few twists, eventually it reveals itself to be a little more dramatic in nature. And when that happened, I began to miss the comedy. Still, I did find it enjoyable, and especially liked Emily Hampshire as Claudia, the friend (or is she?) Hannah makes in the support group.
The Night Walker is another one of William Castle's movies that did not include any kind of associated gimmick, unless you consider Barbara Stanwyck's insane screaming to be a gimmick. Lady had some pipes on her!
Stanwyck stars as Irene Trent, the unhappy wife to a blind, rich asshole who is convinced she is having an affair because she keeps moaning about another man in her sleep. When her husband is conveniently killed in a lab explosion, Irene continues having dreams about another man, and can't determine if they're actually real, or in fact just dreams. Robert Taylor - Stanwyck's real-life ex-husband at the time - is her husband's one-time lawyer, who promises to help her figure out what's really going on.
And what's really going ends up being pretty ridiculous, even by the standards of screenwriter Robert Bloch. Expect some revelations that make you go, "you're kidding, right?"
Really, the best part of the entire movie is the surreal opening montage, especially if you are a fan of the "Haunted Mansion" at Disneyland. That scene is included in the video below if you don't want to bother watching the entire movie (which is available to rent online, though I watched it on a DVD from my library).
Watching Slash/Backimmediately brought to mind Attack the Block, as it is also a movie about a group of marginalized kids fighting an alien attack, and John Carpenter's The Thing, because it's an alien attack movie set in a snowy area. And also because the characters in the movie talk about The Thing directly. Director Nyla Innuksuk is for sure not hiding that film's influence.
The director is Inuit, and majority of the young cast of amateur actors were found primarily in the Inuit community of Pangnirtung, near where it was filmed. That's the film's greatest strength, and also at times it's biggest weakness. Getting a glimpse into a community that does not get a lot of cinematic representation is a treat. And for the most part, the young cast is pretty good. But there are times where their lack of experience definitely comes across in some line readings and stiffness.
I also really loved how the aliens are depicted wearing what are essentially the skins of its victims. What was probably a pretty cheap effect to pull off ends up being both gross and at times, pretty funny.
At the beginning of this countdown I mentioned that the majority of the movies I would be watching would be selected randomly by setting my Letterboxd Watchlist to shuffle, and the genre to horror, and then watching whatever shows up first (and is currently available to watch in some form). But I think this is the first movie that's a miss, because Five Dolls for an August Moon really isn't a horror film. It's more of a murder mystery, and not truly a giallo mystery either, even though it was directed by Mario Bava.
Loosely based on Agatha Christie's And Then There Were None, it also of course brought to mind Glass Onion, though unlike that one, this one does not have a detective on the case, just a murderer, who is picking off the guests on a private island one by one.
Despite some really groovy interiors, costumes, and, on the women, hair, I found this to be a total snooze. I kept hoping it might get garish when the murders started, but those were pretty boring too. Alas.
And maybe if I wasn't wanting and expecting a horror movie, I would have felt different. But I kept waiting for it to turn into the kind of movie I expect from Mario Bava, and it never did. So, the first complete miss on this countdown, in my opinion.
I watched Five Dolls for an August Moon on Kanopy.
Are Samara Weaving movies a genre unto themselves? That genre being a movie where Samara Weaving is fighting for her life through the entire film and eventually ends up covered in blood? Because Azrael definitely fits into that genre.
And sure some of that genre has been good. And I'm usually also a sucker for the other genre this falls into: post-apocalyptic horror. But this one just didn't do it for me. I'll give it credit for originality in one respect though: it is practically dialogue free.
The set up is, the Rapture has taken the majority of humans from Earth. Some of those remaining now live in a cult that believes speech is a sin, and have removed their vocal chords to prevent speaking. Weaving plays a woman who has escaped the cult with her lover - and that cult wants them back.
Oh, and there's also a band of burnt-to-a crisp, flesh-eating demons running around trying to eat these mute cultists, and when they do find them, ooof. It's pretty grisly.
When the movie began, I was kind of digging it. It takes place in some beautiful woods, and the cinematography is gorgeous. But then it just becomes a series of fights and flights, flights and fights, with Weaving ending up covered in blood, as that genre requires. The very, very ending, seems to throw a bit of a twist into the mix, though I'm not sure I really understood it. But also, I didn't really care.
Monster In the Closet is another horror movie partially set in San Francisco, though the majority takes place in a fictional town that is clearly Los Angeles. I will give the movie props for its finale, which does indeed take place on the streets of San Francisco, in and around North Beach and the Transamerica building.
I'll be blunt and tell you that Monster In the Closet is a really stupid movie, but intentionally so. It was distributed by Troma Entertainment, definitely not a company known for hits highbrow taste, and it is literally about a monster (a pretty well designed one, for how cheap the movie is), that hides in closets, attacking and killing people, and somehow its lone existence is enough to set the entire planet into a panic over the end of the world.
But for such a stupid movie, it has an insanely stacked cast full of basically a who's who of 1970's and 1980's character actors, including Henry Gibson, Paul Dooley, Donald Moffat, Claude Atkins, John Carradine, and (a topless!) Stella Stevens.
Horror comedies can be pretty bleak, and Monster In the Closet is no exception. But! I did laugh a handful of times, and the ending is just so silly, I couldn't help but kinda love this dumb movie.
It's streaming free on various platforms, and I'm pretty sure all the copies are crappy VHS transfers. When are we getting a remastered Blu-ray release??
Starve Acre is an intriguing bit of British folk horror that's also a bit of a downer, as it centers on the death of a child, so don't say I didn't warn you.
Matt Smith and Morfydd Clark star as a couple living on the moors in what appears to be the late 1960's or early 1970's. They have a young, asthmatic son who says he has been hearing the voice of someone named Jack Grey when he sleeps. After he's involved in a violent incident at a local fair, his parents take him to a psychiatrist who runs tests, and finds nothing unusual. Then tragedy strikes.
Gradually the husband's work as an archeology professor begins to meld with scary folk tales from his past, and when a mysterious hare makes its way into their home, things get really weird.
I do have a soft spot for folky horror, and liked a lot of this. The hare is both cute and creepy (though I wish they'd made its eyes more realistic), and there are a few surprising developments near the end. But it's also a pretty slow burn, and I did find my mind wandering a few times. So, not a crowd pleaser, but definitely interesting.
I think the only reason I thought Night Schoolmight be worth a watch is because it was the film debut of Rachel Ward, an actress I always liked back in the 1980's, primarily in the miniseries The Thorn Birds, but also in the movies Dead Men Don't Wear Plaid, and Against All Odds. And for a first film, she does give a pretty good performance, even if the movie isn't that great. And gosh, just look at her. Is she pretty or what?
Night School is basically a slasher film, though it could be argued it's actually a giallo, especially since one of the film's other stars is Leonard Mann, who appeared in a few Italian giallos (and spaghetti westerns). He plays the detective on the hunt for a black leather-clad, motorcycle-helmeted killer who decapitates victims and then submerges their heads in water, to be discovered later. When it turns out two of the victims were students of the same anthropology professor at a local all girls college, suspicion falls on him. His being a serial philanderer doesn't help his case with the police, or the latest research assistant he's having an affair with (played by Ward).
Having the detective be the center of the story also makes it sound like a giallo, and some of the kills - or at least, discovery of those kills, especially a morbidly hilarious discovery in a restaurant - are lurid. But a sex scene involving red paint in a shower (!) is the most colorful thing in the movie, and the ultimate whodunit reveal is not nearly convoluted enough by giallo standards. So it probably falls more accurately into the realm of mediocre 80's slashers.
Night School is available to rent online, but I watched it on a Blu-ray from my local library.
The latest movie by the Adams family of filmmakers came out earlier this year, but I decided to put off watching it until this countdown because it's been a bit of a tradition to try and include their films each year. (You can see past entries here, here, here, and here.)
Mother of Flies is a bit more of a return to the stories and style of movie they started out making, after last year's period piece Where the Devil Roams, and 2024's bigger budgeted and effects heavy Hell Hole. And I think they really do their best work when they're working on these simpler tales, closer to home, as I like this one a lot more than those last two.
The story, about a teenage girl with terminal cancer (Zelda Adams), who decides to see a witch (Toby Poser), as a last ditch effort at healing, and her skeptical father (John Adams), who does his best to support this plan, also hits close to home, as both Toby Poser and John Adams have dealt with their own cancer diagnoses in the past, and Zelda is dealing with the genetic implications of that.
And while I am not sure I entirely understand how the story ultimately plays out (the ending is a tad confusing), I really thought the cinematography was beautifully shot, and could feel the more personal aspects of the story play out in the dialogue and performances.
I don't always love the movies the Adams family makes, but I will always absolutely love that they continue to make them.
I think I've mentioned before how I wish Letterboxd had some kind of note or tag you could easily add to a film when you add it to your watchlist, because a lot of the time I have no idea why the hell I felt like a movie ever deserved to be added.
So, I really have no idea how or why The Children ended up on my list. But I'm not mad about it! This movie is nuts! A school bus drives through a toxic cloud, turning the kids into zombies with black fingernails. The kids wander around with their arms outstretched, looking for hugs, but lo, pity the fool who falls into their toxic embrace, as they will surely meet their doom.
I think the movie is trying to make some kind of commentary on irresponsible parenting since it's filled with parents getting stoned during the day, smoking while pregnant, or just generally ignoring their kids. Though really, wasn't that just standard parenting in the 1970's??
It's extremely low budget (though it stars Martin Shaker, an actor probably best known for his role as John Travolta's brother the priest in Saturday Night Fever), but was released on Blu-ray in 2018 by Vinegar Syndrome. I assume the print I watched on Prime is that print, but it's weird how some of the scenes look very faded and rough, while other scenes look absolutely pristine.
