It's officially Halloween night, and I'm getting this final post up right under the wire. I sure hope you had some fun tonight, even if it that just meant sitting at home watching something spooky.
This has been my eighteenth year partaking in the Countdown to Halloween, and I have every intention of keeping this up, so before you know it, it's gonna be the 20th anniversary!
Thanks to everyone who has stopped by this month, I truly appreciate your taking the time to visit my little corner of the Internet. I hope you found some good things to watch, or some bad things to avoid, as the case may be. And if you're at all interested in what I have to say about movies outside of this countdown, be sure to check out my other blog, Mulling Movies, where I review new releases, and follow me on Letterboxd, where I basically have something to say about everything I watch.
Finally, here's a list of all the movies in this countdown, in chronological order, with links to their posts. And best wishes for the holiday season ahead, and a great 2026!
Happy Halloween, and welcome to the final movie in this year's countdown!
As in years past, I like to end this adventure with a movie that's pretty new, or at least newish. This time it's Together, which is not yet on a streaming service, but can be rented online. I was recently staying at a hotel that offered a free movie rental each night, so I was happy to take advantage of the opportunity to watch it that way, especially since the rental cost at that time was an insane $32!
Real life couple Alison Brie and Dave Franco star as Millie and Tim, a dysfunctional couple who move to a new town together after a disastrous marriage proposal. When on a hike in the woods near their home, they literally stumble into a cave with some mysterious drawings and find themselves stuck inside during a storm. Because they are in a horror movie, Tim decides to go ahead and drink the water from the pool in the cave, because why not.
The next morning, they start to find their bodies sticking together whenever they touch, and thus begins the film's very obvious if still effective central metaphor.
I'll admit I was a little nervous going in, as body horror is probably the one sub-genre of horror that can most easily make me gag, but Together is not as gross as I feared it would be, and a lot of its more disturbing moments are implied more than graphically depicted, such as when Millie and Tim have sex and can't...disengage.
I've found after watching so many horror movies that it's the very rare film that has an ending that can truly live up to what has come before, although I suppose that can also be said of most films. Endings are hard! But for horror movies I tend to be a little more dissatisfied with the it all happened because of *waves hands vaguely* endings, especially when what has come before that is strong. I want it all to tie together perfectly. Together's ending did not tie together for me, and I almost would have preferred no explanation at all over the gobbledygook that's provided. Still! What comes before is entertaining enough, and definitely one of the more original depictions of dysfunction and co-dependence in a relationship I've ever seen.
It's been a month of adult horror so I wanted to wind down this countdown with a more family friendly flick. Most of the movies I looked up I had already seen, but two I had not seen were Monster Squad and The Gate, both from 1987.
I started to watch Monster Squad, but there was just so much tossing around of the words "homo" and "faggot" - which, OK fine, it was 1987, a different time - and the kids were also so immediately unlikable, that I turned it off after about 15 minutes. Sorry, not sorry.
I think The Gate was definitely the better choice, although it's not without a tossed off f word as well. But at least this time it's uttered by a likable kid, Glen, played by tiny baby Stephen Dorff, who I had no idea was in this. (Also have to admit I had no idea he started as a child actor!) Glen and his friend Terry (Louis Tripp) unwittingly open a gate to hell in his backyard, and they, along with Glen's older sister Lori (Kelly Rowland), have to fight the army of monsters they've unleashed.
I imagine I passed this one by in the 1980s for the same reasons I didn't bother seeing The Goonies until I was in my forties: I was a teenager in the mid-80s and felt these movies were too childish for the likes of me. When it comes to The Goonies I really do think it's a film that you have to see as a kid to truly appreciate it. But The Gate charmed me, mainly because of its special effects, which combine stop motion with forced perspective to depict its army of tiny demons and the boss monster.
I watched The Gate on Kanopy. It's also streaming on Prime and Hoopla.
Lifeforce has been on both my proverbial and literal watch list for years, and I've never gotten around to it because I was never sure if it was good, bad, or so bad it's good. And I still don't feel like I have any real consensus on that! At various times while watching it, the movie hit all three of those opinions for me.
The good: I liked the opening sequence and how it jumps right in to the story of astronauts discovering a weird space ship inside the tail of Halley's Comet. The effects are definitely dated, especially when we see the astronauts navigating around in their space suits. But the alien ship is kinda cool, and what they discover is weird and fun. I also liked all the practical effects used to depict the results of encounters with the aliens.
The bad: Some of the acting is cringe; Peter Firth as a leather-jacketed detective on the "Case of the Desiccated Bodies" is just a weird choice. Also, star Steve Railsback is not a...subtle actor. And I know Tobe Hooper took on the project (an adaptation of Colin Wilson's Space Vampires, a title he wanted to keep but was not able to after the studio rejected it) because he wanted to make his own version of a Hammer film, and he definitely gets the parts of Hammer movies that are boring down pat: lots of British guys in suits talking about what's going on, endlessly.
The so bad it's good: The main space vampire is a beautiful young woman who spends the majority of her screen time completely naked, just wandering around and sucking the "lifeforce" out of her victims. I guess there are a lot of people who would put that firmly in the "good" column, but for me it just reeked of exploitation. That said, Mathilda May, the actress who plays the space vampire, is stunningly beautiful, and she is almost a walking special effect unto herself. I was also pleased to hear, via some of the extras on the Blu-ray I watched, that her experience on set was, for the most part, a positive one.
The version I watched was the longer "international cut," and I really can't say if that's the version one needs to see. It's about fifteen minutes longer than the cut that was more widely released, and supposedly results in a more cohesive storyline, and likely more nudity. But the movie also feels really long, so, maybe the shorter version is more fun? The shorter one also seems to be the version that's more widely available widely online.
All that said, I'm glad I finally got around to watching it, because it really is just an all around nutso film, and I certainly did not expect the story to get as apocalyptic as it does. It's pretty audacious!
It's kind of ironic that after watching and pretty much hating Creep and its sequel, I went ahead and watched a movie that's been called the female version of Creep. And sure, they do share some similarities, but I ended up appreciating I Blame Society a bit more.
Well, at least a little bit. I Blame Society is a mockumentary about Gillian, a struggling filmmaker who decides to make a movie based on the one compliment she's ever received: that she'd be a great murderer. The fact that she would take a comment like that to actually be a compliment gives you some insight into her personality, and that's the basis of the film's comedy. She's kind of nuts, but she's also been driven crazy by an industry that says it wants to tell stories featuring "strong female leads," but only within the cliched boundaries they've defined.
A lot of it works, and writer/director/star Gillian Wallace Horvat is very funny. But a lot of it falls into the trap that these kinds of found footage films fall into. Multiple angles that don't make a practical sense; footage that could only have been shot if there was more than one person with a camera. It isn't quite strict enough with the conceits of the genre. But it was still more fun than Creep!
I Blame Society is currently streaming on Shudder, Kanopy, and Prime.
Demons was produced by Dario Argento and directed by Lamberto Bava, son of Mario Bava, and it's another 1980's horror flick that just kind of passed me by for reasons I can't really pinpoint. And I kind of wonder if I would have appreciated it a bit more if I saw it back in 1985....
The basic plot is: a bunch of gullible people in Berlin accept free tickets to a movie at a renovated theater. I say gullible because the guy passing them out has a deformed face partially covered by a silver mask, and he doesn't speak. The horror movie they watch somehow releases a demon...virus? that turns some members of the audiences into demons, and the survivors have to fight their way out. Sure, it's called Demons, but really this a zombie movie.
I feel like what most people remember about the movie is the gore and the soundtrack. The gore is definitely goring. But I was under the impression the soundtrack was full of classic metal and new wave, but the only two truly famous songs are "White Wedding" by Billy Idol, and "Save Our Souls" by Mötley Crüe. (No shade to Rick Springfield, but "Walking On the Edge" is not the Rick Springfield song most people want to hear.) I did kind of dig the original soundtrack music by Claudio Simonetti though.
As this is an Italian production, all of the dialogue was dubbed in later, to varying degrees of success. (Whoever dubbed in the voice of the pimp Tony should be ashamed of himself.) The ending definitely sets itself up for a sequel, though it doesn't sound like it's a direct continuation of the story. Not sure I'll seek it out. Maybe next year...
For some reason, Cobweb completely missed my radar in 2023. Not entirely surprising as it was released the same weekend as Barbie and Oppenheimer, which of course was all anyone was interested in that summer.
Cobweb doesn't waste any time setting up its premise. Young Peter (Woody Norman) lives with his parents (Lizzy Caplan and Antony Starr) a rundown house. At night, he begins to hear noises in his bedroom wall. His parents try to convince him it's just his imagination. At school, Peter is bullied by some of the other kids, and prefers to sit inside at recess with his sympathetic substitute teacher Miss Devine (Cleopatra Coleman).
The movie sucked me in right away, and I was instantly riveted. I appreciated how it gradually reveals that the parents aren't as sympathetic as you'd initially think, and just what it is in those walls isn't what you might expect. It also helps that everyone in the cast is excellent (I don't think I've ever not liked Lizzy Caplan) especially young Woody Norman, who is maybe best known now for his role in the Mike Mills movie C'mon C'mon.
But Cobweb also suffers from some bad continuity and plot holes, and an ending that doesn't live up to the rest of the film. I had really high hopes for it because of its strong start, but ultimately there's only half of a good movie in there.
Hollywood 90028 is an angsty drama about the Hollywood dream, the gentrification of Los Angeles, and how the desperation for fame can lead to tragedy. But it's all wrapped up in disguise. Surrounding those themes is a story about Mark (Christopher Augustine) a cameraman on porno movies who's also a serial killer.
It's an odd mix! Those appreciating what director Christina Hornisher is trying to say about Hollywood will probably be turned off by the porno shoot bits (have to admit, those bits made me a little uncomfortable), and those who are there for the porny bits and murder are going to be pretty bored by the rest of it.
There's a lot of dialogue in this, but there are two lengthy bits that are really memorable. One accompanies a section filmed
in Bunker Hill, and discusses the decline of that neighborhood that was once full of families and beautiful Victorian homes. These sequence features some amazing shots of those decaying homes.
The other bit is a monologue by Michelle (Jeannette Dilger) an actress Mark meets on one of his film shoots. She talks about arriving from a small town in pursuit of Hollywood fame, and how a young actress can, bit bit by, find herself working in adult films.
There weren't a lot of women directing exploitation films in the 70's, and while the exploitative aspects of Hollywood 90028 are no different than something that may have been shot by a man - director Christina Hornisher is not hiding any of the expected nudity - there's definitely some commentary going on, from the monologue mentioned above, to the sweaty and lecherous director who watches his set from above with binoculars, to the murderous cameraman himself. (Definite shades of Michael Powell's Peeping Tom in him.)
Hornisher never made another feature, and studios really didn't know what to do with Hollywood 90028. Shot in 1973, it didn't get released until 1976. It was later re-cut and re-released under the title The Hollywood Strangler, and anyone expecting a slasher film would have come away disappointed. I'm even reluctant to include it in this countdown, because it barely counts as a horror film. But it's such a unique, odd, and beautiful film, and anyone who's a fan of Ti West's X trilogy is going to appreciate it. It also has one of the most astounding final shots I've ever seen, anywhere, let alone in a low budget exploitation film by a first time director...
I watched Hollywood 90028 on Mubi. It's also available on Hoopla.
I've long been aware of Creep and its sequel, Creep 2mainly because I've long been aware of Mark Duplass and his extensive body of work...for better or worse. But I never bothered watching it. Not entirely sure why. When it comes to the career of Mark Duplass (as well as the work he's done with his brother Jay), I guess you could say I'm indifferent. Don't love him. Don't hate him. Just ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
But I can say I kind of hated Creep. It's a found footage horror film, which right there, enough already, centered on Aaron (Patrick Brice) who accepts a job offer to film some moments in the life of Josef (Mark Duplass) who has an inoperable brain tumor and wants to create a video for his unborn son. Of course this turns out to be a lie, and Josef is, in fact, a lunatic.
I'll give it this: at the halfway point it kind of veers into a direction I wasn't entirely expecting, but that is the only even halfway surprising thing about Creep. The sequel sets itself up with kind of the same scenario, though this time, the videographer is a YouTuber (Desiree Akhavan) who's desperate to find a subject that will actually get her some views. Enter Josef, who is now calling himself Aaron, and wants someone to document his retirement from serial killing.
I suppose there are some entertaining moments to be found in both films - they both have some funny scenes - and I probably liked the premise of the second more than the first. But ultimately I found both of them pretty boring, and will admit I fell asleep more than once.
After learning yesterday's film was based on a story also adapted in Mario Bava's Black Sabbath, it made me realize I had never actually seen Black Sabbath - I always get it confused with Black Sunday, which I have seen, albeit a long time ago. Might be due for a re-watch!
Apparently there are different edits of this film, with its three stories presented in different orders. The one I watch started with The Drop of Water, in which a nurse does the one thing she's not supposed to do when preparing a deceased patient for her funeral, and suffers the consequences. It's filled with the colored lighting Bava loved, and a truly memorable corpse.
The second story was The Telephone, and apparently the American version I watched has a very different plot than the Italian version. The Italian version includes a call girl, the pimp she helped imprison, and some implied lesbianism. I want to see that version! Of the three shorts, I liked the set decorations and costumes in this one the most.
Finally, the last story was The Wurdulak, with Boris Karloff taking on the role of the family patriarch returning home with an insatiable hunger for the blood of his loved ones. Of course being only about 30 minutes long means it's a much faster take on the story than yesterday's The Vourdulak, but it doesn't have a corpse puppet. Win some, lose some
Not quite as garish and colorful as other Mario Bava movies, but still very beautiful. The soundtrack by Les Baxter is also pretty groovy. I watched it on Prime.
A few posts back I was lamenting the growing disappearance of practical effects in modern horror movies, and lo and behold, here's one that does just that, and it's probably the best thing about the movie.
The Vourdalak is a French adaptation of a story by Tolstoy that was also adapted for the screen as one of the stories in Mario Bava's 1963 anthology film Black Sabbath (check back tomorrow for that one). The setting for this version is Eastern Europe in the 18th-century, where a French Marquis (Kacey Mottet Klein) is robbed and loses his horse. He seeks help from a family who are awaiting the return of their patriarch who has left to fight the Turks. When that patriarch does return, he...well, he looks like a desiccated corpse.
This is where the practical effects come into play, as that talking corpse is very obviously a life-size puppet. The Vourdalak does have a sense of humor about it, as no one in the family seems to be quite as aghast about the patriarch's appearance as they should be. That paired with the utter dandiness of the Marquis means I did have a few good laughs. But I also had a few yawns, and ultimately found the movie a bit of a bore. Definitely pretty, and strange! But also slow and repetitive.
I watched The Vourdalak on Shudder but it is also is available on Kanopy and Tubi.
The 1981 comedy Student Bodies is credited with being the first slasher film parody, beating the Scary Movie franchise to the punch by decades. Alas, first is not always best.
To be fair I didn't really like any of the Scary Movies I've seen either, so this may be a me problem. But I do think those were at least a tad more clever than Student Bodies. Granted, Student Bodies did not have a lot to work with since it was made in 1981, and didn't have all the subsequent 1980's slasher movies to riff off of.
So what you do have a is a heavy breathing killer known as...the Breather, who's after promiscuous high school students. These murders are happening at an inopportune time as it's the day of the big game. And prom. And a parade. And Halloween. And Friday the 13th. And Jamie Lee Curtis's birthday.
The film's central gag is a "body count" that flashes on screen after every murder, which is...not...funny? Is it supposed to be? I think so? And really that's my main reaction to most of the movie. I know it's trying to be funny, but it just rarely is.
Really the only scene I chuckled at was one involving "good girl" Toby (Kristen Riter) and her session with school psychologist Dr. Sigmund (Carl Jacobs). This scene leans heavily into the type of humor Airplane! was doing a year earlier, and I wish more of the movie followed suit.
I kind of made my way backwards to 2014's "screenlife" horror movie Unfriended, featuring films in this countdown that have used the same format to tell their horror stories years after Unfriended did. (For the record those previous films wereDeath of a Vlogger,Host, and We're All Going to the World's Fair.)
I'm actually happy that I, for whatever reason, never bothered to see this when it originally came out because now, over 10 year later, the movie has an added bonus of nostalgia. Nostalgia for the days when teenagers were still actually using Facebook and its clunky, blocky site design; for how photo attachments took almost a minute to download; for pixelated Skype video calls; for the sound a computer hard drive would make when it was processing.
I think distance from 2014 tech also helps in overlooking whether the movie actually gets it right, since I don't really remember what that tech was like. (Also, I've never made a Skype call in my life, so no idea if that's how it really worked.) Like similar films that followed, Unfriended plays out on a computer screen, with us seeing what the main character Blaire (Shelley Hennig) is seeing as she messages and Skypes with her friends. It's the anniversary of a classmate's death who was driven to it by online bullying, and when a stranger enters their Skype call claiming to be that dead classmate, things get spooooooky.
Frankly, I wanted things to get a little spookier. There are two scenes that use the tech well, taking advantage of common computer glitches and making them spooky. But there's not enough of that, and towards the middle, when it's just these kids screaming at each other, I got a bit bored. Cut 15 minutes out of this, and you'd have a really tight little horror flick.
As it's not currently streaming free anywhere, and my library only has the sequel (reserving that now, ha), I rented Unfriended on Apple TV.
As someone who will watch literally any horror or sci-fi movie set in San Francisco, it's pretty preposterous that I had not yet seenIt Came From Beneath the Sea. To be fair, I suspected I had already seen the best parts of it, as I've seen the clips of the giant octopus attacking the Ferry Building and the Golden Gate Bridge many times. Turns out, yes indeed, those are the best parts of the movie.
The rest of it is, frankly, a total bore, even though they try to juice up the military blather and pseudo-science by tossing in a romance between submarine commander Pete Mathews (Kenneth Tobey) and Marine biologist Lesley Joyce (Faith Domergue).
But it takes way too long until we get a glimpse of the creature, and way, way too long until that creature gets to San Francisco. But those moments, thanks to the special effects from legend Ray Harryhausen, are just pure fun. (Pay attention to the number of tentacles that "octopus" actually has.)
I was surprised the only place I could find a free streaming copy was on Tubi, with commercials. But it's also available as a rental basically anywhere else.
I've included movies from the Adams family in threepreviouscountdowns. I love their story and their whole deal, which you can read more about here. This year's entry is Where the Devil Roams, and I have to say, while aesthetically this one is right up my alley, with its depression era sideshow setting, of the four Adams family movies I have seen, I liked this one the least.
And I should caveat that with, while I did like a lot of the film's aesthetics, there were also things about the aesthetics that did not work at all. For one thing, a lot of the sideshow "freaks" are just too modern looking. They would not be out of place at a modern goth dance club. For another, the switch from scratchy black and white to color within the film doesn't always make sense thematically. Also, while I like the metal-ish music the family also creates together, I didn't like its use in this movie. It kept ripping me out of the era.
Finally, the story is just a mess. Ostensibly about a mother, father, and daughter (all played by real like family, John Adams, Toby Poser, and Zelda Adams, who also wrote and directed it together) who develop a gruesome sideshow act with terrible consequences, but the storytelling is chaotic. Too often its obvious they are going for "arty" over coherence.
And again, some of the visuals are really stunning. There are moments I will definitely never forget. But I just came away from it really frustrated. Like, all the pieces were there for them to make their greatest feature yet, and they just couldn't get them to fit together.
This is their first film produced for Tubi, and not available on Shudder. I watched it commercial free on Prime.
After watching Booger I wanted some more cat-centric horror, so I chose Greydon Clark's Uninvited.
My god what a choice. What a terrible, wonderful choice.
I first became familiar with the b-movie career of Greydon Clark after a local screening this year of his 1983 comedy Joysticks. That film is awful, but also enjoyable, which I can safely say sums up Clark's career in a nutshell.
Uninvited is everything you'd want from a terrible movie. A plot that sounds like it was cobbled together in ten minutes ("Lab experiment gone wrong during spring break in Florida and a millionaire with a yacht who's trying to flee the country to avoid arrest. Also, a cat."); gratuitous nudity; special effects so immensely bad they become charming; Clu Gulager.
I have to say a bit more about those effects. Yes, there is a real cat in this. It does survive, and never seems to be in any overtly stressful situations, even though it ostensibly vomits up an evil mutant cat several times over the course of the film.
The vomiting cat and the vomited cat are so very clearly hand puppets, and that's what makes Uninvited so fun, and an example of something that is probably gone for good. In the age of CG and A.I., even if you wanted to create a movie with terrible effects like this, those effects would likely be created using computers, and not old carpeting, fake fur, and KY jelly. So I will continue to treasure films like Uninvited for the lost art they are.
I watched Uninvited on Prime. It is also available to stream with commercials on Tubi.
As I do with any movie that prominently features an animal, I had to look up whether the cat in the movie Boogerdies or not. Spoiler: it does not. (But a rat does!)
In fact the cat gets off much better than the lead character Anna (Grace Glowicki, excellent). She's dealing with the trauma of losing her best friend Izzy. When their cat Booger bites her in a fit of cat rage, and then runs away, she attempts to deal with both the aftermath of her friends' death, and a search for the cat. All this while also beginning to undergo some...changes.
Booger is a very short film, not even 90 minutes long, so it doesn't take long to jump right into its tale of body horror, and indeed there are some moments that are really gross. (Cats puking up hair balls is gross enough; it's something else entirely to see a human do it.) But it also pairs that grossness with a good sense of humor; the short glimpses into Anna and Izzy's friendship via little video clips from their social media are a delight.
Being that one of my favorite horror movies is Cat People (the 1982 one; yes I'm serious) this movie was of course very much my jam. It doesn't quite come near to that film's greatness (shut up) but I think I'm just always going to be partial to horror movies centered on cats and catness.
Booger is available to stream, with commercials, on Tubi, Plex, and Roku. I watched it commercial free on Prime.
Am I the only one who upon reading the title of this movie thinks of SCTV and Dr. Tongue's Evil House of Pancakes? Also, as the framing story is set on a train, it really should have been titled Dr. Horror's Terror Train, or some such. But I digress!
Like most anthology movies, some stories work better than others. Five men on a train have their tarot read by a Doctor Schreck (Peter Cushing) and he proceeds to tell them what horrible fates await them. The first story, about an architect and a werewolf, I found pretty dull. The second, about a killer garden vine, was pretty silly, plus - spoiler alert! - it kills a dog. The third, about a jazz trumpeter that steals a song from a voodoo ritual, is, I think, supposed to be funny, but isn't.
The last two are the best. Christopher Lee is an art critic who is humiliated by an artist, takes some revenge, but then the artist gets his revenge. And finally the last story stars Donald Sutherland as an American doctor who thinks his French bride may be a vampire.
Ultimately, all of the stories are a little silly, purposely so, and I'm pretty sure that's not how tarot cards work. But it has a good twist, and all of the stories are short enough that if you aren't digging one, you don't have to wait long for the next.
Dr. Terror's House of Horrors is streaming with commercials on Tubi, and there is also an OK copy on YouTube. I watched it on a Blu-ray from my library.
I watched The Ward because it was directed by John Carpenter, plain and simple. In fact at this point, it's the last feature length film he's directed - and I'm a little surprised it's taken me this long to get to it, though truth be told, I haven't watched the last three theatrical releases he's made. I guess Escape from L.A. just broke me.
And yeah, this one is not very good either. But it's also not terrible. I've seen worse horror movies (some by Carpenter himself!) and I think what redeems it a bit is it has some strong performances by all the featured actresses, including lead Amber Heard (do not come at me with any Amber Heard hot takes; I will not have it!), Mamie Gummer (seen above), and none other than Vanderpump Rules alum Laura-Leigh herself (she made this three years before joining that show).
The story is kind of a mess, combining supernatural elements with the horrors inherent in a mid-1960's mental hospital, along with some twists that kind of work before falling apart completely. But Carpenter is a strong enough filmmaker that I was never bored, and while never really scared, I did get creeped out a few times.
The Ward is streaming on a number of different services; I watched it on Peacock.
This year's Dario Angento feature is The Cat O'Nine Tails, an early giallo that leans more into the murder mystery aspects of the genre than the grisly horror aspects. Karl Malden stars as Franco "Cookie" Arnò, a former journalist, now blind, who lives with his orphaned niece, Lori (Cinzia De Carolis). When Franco stumbles upon a blackmail scheme, he teams up with a reporter (James Franciscus) and together they uncover a murder plot involving a genetic research facility.
While the film does contain some of Argento's trademarks - lots of eyeballs; wacky, implausible science; some grisly kills - it's definitely not as garish as his movies would eventually get, which means I found this one a tad boring.
Also, finding a good streaming copy was frustrating! Like most Italian movies, the dialogue was dubbed in post production, buy it's obvious Karl Malden is speaking English throughout. But the only English language version I could find online was a terrible print, so I ended up watching the Italian language version on Kanopy, because the print is beautiful. But watching Karl Malden "speak" Italian though the whole thing was just damned distracting! So, not an ideal viewing experience, but definitely more enjoyable than last year's Argento entry.
While yesterday's film Shanks, was framed as a kind of fairytale, The Ugly Stepsister, from Norway, is a blatant reinterpretation of the Cinderella story, which, if you've read about its various iterations, is a lot bloodier than the Disney version would have us believe; making a straight up horror movie version of the story makes sense.
And The Ugly Stepsister is definitely filled with some truly horrible moments. Focused on Elvira, one of two "ugly" (they aren't) stepsisters to the orphaned and "beautiful" Agnes, the story finds her doing anything she can to catch the eye of the (quite unworthy) Prince at his upcoming ball.
No specific year is given, but it looks roughly to be the Victorian age, and the film's attention to details in the costuming and set design is really beautiful. These prettier bits reminded me a bit of Sofia Coppola's Marie Antoinette, with a dash of The Love Witch tossed in. And I think it's important to have some pretty things to look at because there is a lot of really stomach turning body horror throughout, along with some shocking (at least to these American eyes) graphic nudity.
What The Ugly Stepsister has to say about beauty standards and misogyny is not groundbreaking, but it is effective. Thankfully the film also has a very dark sense of humor, and Lea Myren's central performance as Elvira holds it all together. It is funny, heartbreaking, and disgusting.
William Castle, king of the gimmick horror film, ended his directing career with Shanks, a gimmick-free, though truly bizarre fairy tale about a deaf and mute puppeteer named Malcolm Shanks who learns how to reanimate the dead. He's played by Marcel Marceau, who was once the world's most famous mime during a time when you could actually be a world famous mime.
Ironically, Marceau doesn't actually do a lot of stuff that one could call miming, instead he spends the majority of the movie turning dials on remote controls that reanimate the dead people around him, the majority of whom he has accidentally killed. It's those reanimated corpses that are the dominant mimes in this film. Tsilla Chelton, who was in Marceau's mime troupe, plays Shanks's cruel sister, and Philippe Clay, another mime, plays her drunken husband.
I suppose that in itself could be considered a bit of a gimmick? Mimes as zombies? Zombies as mimes? The movie is also framed like a silent film, with the main character never speaking, and intertitles used to explain parts of the plot.
As a whole, I didn't think it really worked. It's too creepy to be funny, and too silly to be truly scary. It also has an ending that's a real turn-off, although it tries to redeem itself in a way that feels like a cop out. So, an interesting way for Castle to go out, but definitely not one of his best.
Shanks isn't currently streaming on any service, so I rented it on Apple TV.
Night of the Reaper is a retro slasher film with a dash of found footage horror. Set in an unspecified year in the 1980's, when MTV, Coke Classic, and dial telephones were still a thing, it opens with a well-done sequence showing the stalking of a babysitter by a killer with a video camera.
It then jumps ahead a bit to follow another teenager, who is back in town from college, and is roped into a job babysitting the sheriff's kid for the night. Meanwhile, the sheriff is getting videotapes of snuff films...
The retro feel immediately brings to mind House of the Devil, one of my all-time faves, but it's not nearly as good as that. Its low budget can be pretty apparent at times, and some of the performances are a little over-wrought. But Jessica Clement as the "final girl" is pretty good, and has the perfect eyes for a role that requires lots of looks of terror. I also appreciated that it goes in some unexpected directions. In all, a pleasant surprise, and one of Shudder's better originals.
On September 9th, 2020 those who live in the San Francisco Bay Area lived through a day when the sky turned orange, and the sun never broke through. At the time, a lot of references to Dune, Blade Runner 2049, and Night of the Comet were made, and that made me realize I had never actually seen Night of the Comet.
Turns out the reference is not really that accurate since the skies in Night of the Comet are more red than orange, the after affects of a comet passing over earth that turns the majority of lookie-loos into piles of orange dust. Those who survive are either rage filled zombies, or under threat of becoming rage filled zombies.
Our heroines are two Los Angeles sisters who, after some initial freaking out, do what any right minded teenage girl in the 1980's would do if they were seemingly the last people on Earth. They go to the mall.
That's undoubtedly the most enjoyable part of the film, and I kind of wish it had delved into that Dawn of the Dead scenario a little longer. Instead the last half of the film involves some scientists (one played by Mary Woronov) who may or may not be evil, and leans too heavily into action and explosions. Still, it's, like, totally enjoyable and I'm glad I finally watched it.
It was not available to stream anywhere at the time of this writing, so I borrowed a DVD copy from my local library, but I think it is currently available on Hoopla.
My Heart Can't Beat Unless You Tell It Tofalls into the genre of vampirism as metaphor for [fill in the blank], in this case, chronic illness, and the toll caring for the ill can take on a family. In other words, a comedy!
I'm kidding of course. My Heart is a very bleak bit of horror about three siblings, Ingrid Sophie Schram as Jessie, Patrick Gugit as Dwight, and Owen Campbell as their youngest brother Thomas, who is, essentially, a vampire.
I don't think the word "vampire" is actually uttered in the film, but Thomas can't be exposed to sunlight, and has to drink human blood to survive. So, vampire - but not the kind of vampire that has any kind of super strength. As is the case with most who are chronically ill, Thomas is isolated, weak, and dependent on others to keep him alive.
So it's up to his siblings to provide him with the blood he needs, which they do by murdering transients and other people whose disappearances will tend to go unnoticed. That also means they have to live under the radar, without any real friends or social life outside of each other.
Like I said, bleak! But I think the movie rises above its depressing story mainly due to the strength of the performances by its three leads. It's not a fun horror movie. But it is an effective one.
I watched My Heart Can't Beat Unless You Tell It To on Prime Video, but it is also available free with commercials on Tubi and Pluto.
Once again, I'm not entirely sure how The Legacy got on my radar, but its plot, which is like an Agatha Christie mystery mixed with possible devil worship, and lots of cats, meant it was something I needed to see. Sadly, the only place to stream it online right now is a terrible copy on YouTube, so I went ahead and bought the Blu-ray release, which features a pristine restored print. Definitely worth the investment as it's a beautiful film, and also pretty bat shit crazy.
It's also the movie that brought longstanding Hollywood couple Katharine Ross and Sam Elliott together, and I can I totally get why Ross (allegedly) left her husband for Elliott shortly after making the movie, if his partially nude scenes played any part in that decision.
Together they play Maggie and Pete, an American couple who are vacationing in England prior to Maggie starting a mysterious architecture job. When their motorcycle collides with a car on a countryside back road, they are invited to recover at Ravenhurst, your typical spooky English estate. They soon realize that accident was no accident, and they aren't the only guests at Ravenhurst. (The Who's Roger Daltrey has a small role as one of those guests.)
The Legacy is in many ways pretty silly, but I also thought it was a lot of fun. Then again I will always be a sucker for anything that could be described as Downton Abbey meets Rosemary's Baby.
Mike Flanagan is definitely one of the most prominent horror directors working right now, and I've really liked the majority of his work. But one thing's for sure: he's not afraid to go dark, and for me, sometimes that works, and sometimes it doesn't.
Ironically, the one time I wished he'd gone darker, at least as far as endings goes, was with his Netflix miniseries version of The Haunting of Hill House. Its ending strayed from the original novel's enough that it came off as a happy one, which to me went against the story thematically, and frankly, kind of pissed me off.
Oculus is definitely on the dark side of the Flanagan spectrum, and, as is the case with much of his work, it deals with family, and coming face to face with the traumas of childhood. I won't go too deep into the story, but it centers on a brother and sister, their parents, who may have gone crazy, or may have been possessed, and an antique mirror that may be the key to it all.
The story bounces from the past to the present, as the adult sister (Karen Gillian, who is excellent) is convinced she can defeat the evil she's sure is responsible for her family's tragic past. Seeing her lay out her plan, and figuring out why it could work (and how it might not) is the fun part of the movie. The not so fun part is seeing her and her brother's younger selves tortured by their parents; that's a rough watch.
So, Oculus was a mixed bag for me. I really liked a lot of it, but the parts that were tough, were very tough, and ultimately it left me kind of bummed out! But I will say, of the two movies centered on possibly haunted mirrors I've seen this year, this is by far the better one.
Earlier this year I spent a few days in Mendocino, and while I was there watched a couple of movies that were filmed in the area. One that was a potential watch, but not streaming at the time, was Dead & Buried, so I decided to catch up with that one for this countdown.
Mendocino this time is called Potters Bluff, and I believe it's supposed to be set on the east, not the west coast. Potters Bluff is a town filled with weirdos who kill strangers while taking pictures and filming movies. Why this is happening is the mystery, and the town sheriff, played by James Farentino, is trying to get to the bottom of it.
Why the sheriff seems to be the last to know just what exactly is going on doesn't make a lot of sense, and really, neither does the ultimate reveal if you think about it too hard. It's kind of Invasion of the Body Snatchers meets a zombie movie, but at least I can say I don't think I've seen that combination before.
I do feel like there is a possibility I saw this one back in the day because the poster image seems so familiar, but if I did I really have no memory of it. I watched it this time on Prime Video.
