The Countdown To Halloween Day 11 9 Windows (2024)

 

I got 9 Windows in one of those mystery boxes you can get (or could get as the service I subscribed to folded earlier this year) on a monthly basis.  I opened the box and put this particular blue ray “in the pile”.  Meaning I set it aside to watch one day.  Well, this is that day.  Let’s see what this one has in store for us.  The film was written and directed by Lou Simon who also wrote and directed Agoraphobia and All Girls Weekend.  9 Windows stars little knows actress Diana Garle who has a few other films to her credit but nothing I’ve ever heard of.  Garle plays Liza, a recent graduate who is about to go off to Quantico to be an FBI agent.  She is involved in a tragic automobile accident that kills her parents and leaves her paralyzed.  Liza sets herself up with a state-of-the-art home renovation that includes voice-activated locks and motion detectors.

 

 

In her house there is also a video wall with nine monitors.  Liza uses these screens to stay in touch with the rest of the world mostly by watching vloggers.  One of the only people she has any contact with is her physical therapist Jeff, played by Christopher Millan; someone else I have never heard of before.  Liza watches one of the video feeds as a man is seen setting a dog on fire.  Liza quickly reports this to the police and meets Tim Boyle.  Boyle, played by William Forsythe (The Devil’s Rejects and Rob Zombie’s 2007 Halloween remake) is a detective who tells Liza there is little he can do since the crime is just a misdemeanor.

 

Liza continues to monitor the screens and sees more crimes committed by what seems to be the same man.  Liza is able to record one of the crimes and Boyle asks former retired FBI agent Thurgood for his help investigating.  Thurgood is played by Michael Pare who you may have seen in Streets of Fire or Eddie and The Cruisers.  Or you may have seen him in one of the more than two hundred other films he has appeared in.  The guy is always working!  Thurgood, along with Boyle still believe the killings are all hoaxes.  Liza digs deeper and uses skills she has acquired through technology as well as her own investigative abilities and is able to get some real evidence that may lead her to the actual killer.  Something that may be what makes her the killers next target. 

 

 

Now some have said this is a modern retelling of Hitchcock’s Rear Window and I guess it is but let’s not get ahead of ourselves.  We’re talking Hitchcock, Jimmy Stewart, and Grace Kelly in a near perfect psychological thriller, so I’m nearly offended by the comparison.  OK, truth be told it really is similar.  But is it as good as Rear Window?  Hardly, but it certainly isn’t bad.  Clocking in at less than 90 minutes, this is a taunt psychological thriller with some disturbing images that stays interesting for nearly the entire time.  Forsythe is always good, Pare, who often chews the scenery in everything he does, is subdued and likeable here.  Even Garle and Millan’s performances are good enough to not detract from the film.  I will say other than the part where they kill a dog (I always take off for this type of crap unless it’s absolutely necessary to the plot which it isn’t here, I mean they could have used a rat or a possum or a raccoon not that I hate any of those, but ya know, not a dog) Liza is a little difficult to like but considering what she has gone through in a short period of time I will give them the benefit of the doubt and only take off for the dog.  It would have been three and a half but after the penalty it gets three power drills out of five.  Now someone explain to me what it means that this was the first ever virtually produced film ever made.

 

 

 

 

The Countdown To Halloween Day 10 The Witching Season (2015)

 

I know I’ve said this before, but it bears repeating I love horror anthologies.  I also love Halloween themed films (even more than I love Christmas themed movies) so the fact that this is a Halloween themed anthology film is right in my wheelhouse.  So, let’s dive in and see what The Witching Season has to offer.  I was happy to discover that this film was basically made by a bunch of friends.  The anthology originally was a web series and was made with a low budget but who cares; good is good and bad is bad.  Regardless of how much cash is spent on a film it doesn’t mean it’s going to be good.  I cite The Marvels as a perfect example of money alone not being able to make a good movie.  Oh, I went and got my soap box out to give a lecture.  Let me put it away and actually review a movie.

 

James Morris did the writing duties and helped out with the directing.  Morris also directed He Never Left Us and wrote They Live Inside Us.  Michael Baliff directed and he usually teams up with Morris as he also directed He Never Left Us and he also directed one of the stories in 10/31 Part 3.  Morris also stars in all five shorts that make up The Witching Season and Baliff is in two of them.  The other folks appearing here (most of them can also be seen in Morris and Baliff films that I already mentioned) also star in more than one of the five stories.  The list of names include Jordan Swenson (who is also a producer), Samuel Morris, Hailey Nebeker, and sisters Emily and Karlee Broschinsky. 

 

Something I will say about The Witching Season is it is heavy on the Halloween nostalgia which to me is always welcome.  Just about every scene in every short is loaded with Halloween imagery.  I will also point out that the opening credits are reminiscent to the opening credits of Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers.  I’m not going to take points off for it either, I’m going with the idea that it is an homage instead of a rip off which is what many people go with these days.  Now the question is this better, about the same, or worse than Halloween 4?  I have to say it’s very close.  There’s about as many bad reviews out there as there are glowing ones.  I’m leaning more towards the glowing ones and I give this three Count Spookula’s out of five which is also what I gave Halloween 4.  I will also end this post with a poem that appears in the movie.  I liked the poem that much and I hope you will like it as well.

 

On All Hallows Eve,
 She Comes with the Wind.
As darkness descends,
She’ll find a way in.
Those who have seen her,
They go to the black.
For once you have seen her,
You never come back.

 

 

  

The Countdown To Halloween Day 9 Piranha 3DD (2012)

 

I know summer 2025 is well in the rear-view mirror but today let’s go back to the lake for some fun time in the water.  3DD is a sequel to Piranha 3D and as of today the last film in the series.  Starring in this comedy horror is Danielle Panabaker (Sky High and TVs The Flash) as Maddy, a marine biologist who has come home for the summer.  She along with her stepfather Chet, played by David Koechner (The 40-Year-Old Virgin and Anchorman), own a water park.  Also starring is Matt Bush (Adventureland and TVs The Goldbergs), and Katrina Bowden (Tucker and Dale vs. Evil and Nurse 3-D).  There are also some small cameo appearances, including David Hasselhoff who plays a supersized version of himself and just about steals the entire film.  There’s also Ving Rhames, Paul Scheer, Clu Gulager, Christopher Lloyd, and Gary Busey as well.  Performing the director duties is John Gulager, who is the son of Clu.  He is also responsible for the Feast series of horror films as well as Zombie Night.

 

 

A school of prehistoric man-eaters have managed to find their way to another lake in Arizona.  This is also the same lake where the water park Maddy and her stepfather own is.  Now, on paper, this looks like it should be a fun ride and other than a few funny scenes with all the familiar names I already mentioned it falls short of entertaining.  Now, I’m not saying it’s terrible, because it’s not THAT bad.  I’ve seen worse for sure, and you may or may not read about some of them right here during this Halloween season.  Just to set the record straight this is the movie that killed the Piranha film franchise.  This was the fifth and final installment in the series.  A sixth was planned but since this did so horribly both at the box office (yeah, they released this in theaters) and with critics, the producers decided to cut their losses.

 

It's hard to grade this, I mean I want to say it wasn’t as bad as some say, because it’s really not.  There are some good moments but they are dragged through the mud of some really bad scenes filled with people who can’t act their way out of a paper bag.  Most of the blame lies with Harvey and Bob Weinstein as they wanted to make a sequel as cheaply as possible which we know is a bad idea 99% of the time.  I mean they even took at least one scene cut from an earlier Piranha film and put it in this one.  I don’t hate it as much as most people do so I will give it two D’s out of five.  Not recommended unless you really want to see some serious cheese but there are some good kills that might entertain you for a few minutes at a time. 

 

 

The Countdown To Halloween Day 8 The Bad Seed (1956)

 

 

 

 In what might be a feeble attempt to appear legitimate, I decided to watch and review The Bad Seed, a classic psychological thriller from 1956.  Mervyn LeRoy (Little Caesar and Gypsy) handles the directing duties here which comes as a bit of a surprise as this isn’t something I would expect from LeRoy.  Starring is Nancy Kelly (Jesse James and Frontier Marshall) as Christine and Patty McCormack (The Master and Frost/Nixon) as Rhoda a mother and her eight-year-old daughter.  Christine loves her daughter Ronda but she discovers her little girl just might be a murderer.

 

Also appearing as Leroy Jessup, the family gardener, is Henry Jones (Vertigo and 9 To 5) who constantly picks on Ronda and features in some of the most uncomfortable scenes in the film.  I’m also going to mention Paul Fix (El Dorado and Night of the Lepus) who portrays Christine’s father Richard Bravo.  Richard gives Christine information that leads her to believe that her daughter is a killer even more than she did before.  What might be the biggest surprise in the film however is the role of Hortense Daigle as portrayed by Eileen Heckart.  Mrs. Daigle is the mother of a little boy who drowns in a lake while on a school picnic.  Heckart won a Golden Globe award for best supporting actress.

 

The Bad Seed never really makes you wonder if little Ronda is in fact the killer or not.  She is, for sure.  But she’s such a cute little pig tailed killer.  Will that be enough to allow her to get away with murder?  Now I mentioned earlier that Heckart won a Golden Globe, but she was also nominated for an Academy Award as well.  Also nominated was Nancy Kelly for best actress and McCormack was nominated for supporting actress along with Heckart.  Harold Rossom was also nominated for cinematography.  The Bad Seed was a box office as well as a critical success mostly due to the fact that there was nothing else like it before.  A psychopathic child committing murder?  Unheard of!  I will go three and a half pairs of tap shoes out of five for a movie that not only walked a fine line between what was allowed and what wasn’t but was also years ahead of it’s time. 

 

 

The Countdown To Halloween Day 7 The Quartermass Experiment

 

The Creeping Unknown is how this film is known in the U.S. but here’s the thing; I’m in the U.S. and I’ve never seen this referred to it as that.  For me it’s always been The Quartermass Experiment.  I guess the name change comes from the fact that in the U.S. the TV show this is taken from (and under the same name) never aired here.  I’m guessing so keep that in mind.  The original Quartermass Experiment was a British TV series from 1953 that the movie is of course based on.  For this review I will be only discussing the movie and similarities are not intended.

 

 

Starring here is Brian Donlevy (Destry Rides Again and Kiss of Death) as Professor Quartermass, Richard Wordsworth who had small roles in both The Curse of the Werewolf and The Revenge of Frankenstein is Victor Carroon.  Carroon is the sole survivor of a manned rocket sent into space to orbit Earth.  Quartermass is the man behind the new rocket hence the title of the film.  After the rocket crash lands back onto Earth the only astronaut still on board is Carroon.  The other two men on board are missing.  Soon after crashing, Carroon begins to mutate into a horrible looking alien.

 

Also starring here is Jack Warner (The Ladykillers and Scrooge) as Inspector Lomax from Scotland Yard who is investigating the disappearance of the other astronauts.  Margia Dean (The Baron of Arizona and Ambush at Cimarron Pass) is Carroon’s wife Judith. Lionel Jeffries (Chitty Chitty Bang Band and Stage Fright) stars as Quartermass main detractor, Blake.  And the last I will mention here is Maurice Kaufmann (Fanatic and Man of Violence) is Quartermass’ assistant Marsh.

 

Historic in that this is the first Hammer Horror movie ever made.  Directing here is Val Guest who also directed Casino Royal and The Abominable Snowman of the Himalayas.  The original TV show was written by Nigel Kneale who also wrote the screenplays for Look Back in Anger and The Entertainer.  Writing here is Val Guest pulling double duty and Richard Landau who was a prolific writer of TV shows for over 25 years.  The Quartermass Experiment is campy, no doubt about it but it doesn’t detract from it as it’s done well.  The movie isn’t the same as the TV show, a fact that Kneale didn’t like but the TV show was of course a lot longer and involved than allotted in a film with a run time of less than 90 minutes.

 

In the past I have given this four out of five but for some reason I wasn’t into it as much as I have been before.  One of the things that really bothered me this time (and not so much every other time I’ve watched it) was the dubbing of the voice over for Dean’s character Judith.  She was possibly hired because she was a girlfriend of a studio exec or something like that, I don’t care so much about that.  All of her lines are dubbed because she had an accent that Guest didn’t like (in fact he didn’t really want her in the film at all) and he thought she couldn’t act even a little bit.  I also felt like (this time anyway) I was watching an early Doctor Who episode.  Maybe that’s just due to the fact that it was an early BBC science fiction TV show.  Or it could be because the special effects, which were cutting edge then, feel like some bad rubber suit monster type of effects today. 

 

 

No matter what the cause of the lowering of the rating this is still a very good film.  Don’t get me wrong on that account, I still recommend this one.  I will only take a half of a star off from my normal score and go with three and a half smashed cactuses out of five for this early ‘50s sci-fi classic.

 

 

The Countdown To Halloween Day 6 Shrunken Heads (1994)

 

Here we have yet another Full Moon Entertainment production from Charles Band.  Doing the directing is Richard Elfman, the brother of Danny who does the music here along with Richard Band who is a frequent contributor to Full Moon and his brother Charles.  It’s a friggin’ family affair here.  The plot centers around three nerdy teenagers who are killed by members of a street gang named The Vipers.  The main stars though aren’t really the three boys or the members of the street gang.

 

Starring as Mr. Sumatra is Julius Harris (Live and Let Die, Super Fly, and Black Caesar) in his final film roll.  Mr. Sumatra is an ex Haitian police officer who runs a news stand.  After Tommy, Billy, and Freddie are murdered Sumatra performs a voodoo ritual and reanimates the boys as shrunken heads, hence the title.  Meg Foster (They Live, The Lords of Satan, and 31) is Big Mo, the crime boss who gives The Vipers their marching orders.  Starring as Sally is Rebecca Herbst who is most well-known for starring as Elizabeth Webber in the soap opera General Hospital.  Now Sally is Vinnie’s girlfriend, but she secretly has a crush on Tommy, even after he is reduced to a shrunken head, she still helps him get revenge on Vinnie and the rest of Big Mo’s gang.

 

 

Now the three shrunken heads aren’t just your normal run of the mill shrunken heads that you can pick up at Toys R Us for ten bucks a pop, these guys have superpowers.  Tommy shoots electricity, Bill is a vampire shrunken head, and Freddie unleashes a switchblade from his mouth.  Shrunken Heads isn’t going to blow your mind.  If you know anything about Charles Band or Full Moon you know what to expect.  And Shrunken Heads delivers.  Unfortunately this is probably one of Full Moon’s best films to never get a sequel.  For a film that had a difficult time with funding, Shrunken Heads looks like an 80’s superhero film.  Only problem is it was made in the mid 90’s.  I will go with three Folger’s coffee cans out of five for this surprisingly fun dark comedy from Uncle Charlie Band.  This one come with a huge your mileage may vary (YMMV) warning.

 

  

The Countdown to Halloween Day 5 Seedpeople (1992)

 

 

Everybody knows, OK not everybody but a lot of people know I love Charles Band and Full Moon Entertainment.  Now I don’t like Band because his movies are so damn good, in fact it’s usually the opposite.  Look, Full Moon ain’t putting out movies that are up for Academy Awards but damn it, they are entertaining.  Seedpeople falls into that category.  Sort of.  Seedpeople is directed by frequent Charles Band collaborator Peter Manoogian who has also directed Demonic Toys and Eliminators.  Both of which Band also produced.

 

 

Seedpeople, which is not a rip off of Invasion of The Body Snatchers.  At all.  You guys, I mean it.  It’s not.  Well, you be the judge after I tell you more about Seedpeople.  Starring here is Sam Jennings (Caddo Lake and Four Good Days) as Tom, a geologist.  The story is mostly told through his eyes.  So the story is this: a small town is invaded by some sort of alien beings.  These aliens are seeds that fall off an outer space tree and eventually turn into aliens.  These seed people are able to make themselves look like the people they take over.  The seed people don’t kill the originals and make alien copies of them,  they take over their bodies and minds.  See, not like Body Snatchers at all.

 

 

Also starring is Andrea Roth (The Collector and TVs Rescue Me) as Heidi who is Tom’s former love interest.  While being back home to investigate a meteorite that has fallen Tom stays at Heidi’s bed and breakfast.  The hometown even has an interesting name: Comet Valley.  To make matters worse about the current situation, the town will be cut off from the mainland as the bridge leading to the island is going to be down for repair.  This traps everyone on the island and specifically Comet Valley.  Oh, I almost forgot to add that Sonny Carl Davis (Evil Bong series of films and a lot of other Full Moon movies) also has a small part here as well but he’s not the same character that I know and love from the Evil Bong films so really, anyone could have played the roll.

 

 

Before you asks, I’m gonna tell you that of course this is the normal low budget Full Moon movie.  For the most part the cinematography is good for it’s time but the issue is with the seed people.  When they are rolled up into their rolling around pods they look a little bit like a hairy scrotum.  Sorry, they do.  And when they come out of their tuck and begin to fly and or walk they look like a poodle with a bad case of the mange.  Heidi’s niece Kim is able to capture the seed people on video tape (using one of the first video cameras ever made judging by it’s size) and the local doctor Doc Roller knows about the seed people before Tom and the rest of the town does.  Doc Roller uses UV lights to combat the invaders as they do not seem to like them.  The film is OK as it is and I wouldn’t tell you to avoid it but I can’t give it anything more than two and a half Ding Dong Hecka-ma-Doodle-Hells out of five.  It’s really two and three quarters but no quarter stars allowed here!

 

 

The Countdown to Halloween Day 4 The Devil's Candy (2017)

 

Today’s offering comes in the form of 2017’s The Devil’s Candy which was directed by Sean Byrne.  Byrne also gave us The Loved Ones that I watched and included in the 2017 Countdown to Halloween.  Byrne also directed a short titled Advantage Satan which The Devil’s Candy is supposedly adapted from.  You couldn’t tell by me however as I’ve seen Advantage Satan and other than it was also directed by Byrne, I don’t see the similarities.  But what do I know?  Starring in The Devil’s Candy is Ethan Embry (Empire Records and Can’t Hardly Wait) as Jesse, a struggling painter, husband, and father.  Starring as his wife Astrid is Shiri Shipley (Havoc and Swimfan).  Along with their daughter, the three of them move into their new home which doesn’t have a great past.

 

 

Before they lived there, a man named Ray Smilie lived there with his mother.  Ray, played by Pruitt Taylor Vince (Constantine and Jacob’s Ladder), hears voices and in order to drown them out he plays his guitar very loudly.  His mother tells him to stop and he explains why he does it and she threatens to send him back to the mental institute.  Ray kills his mother.  Soon, Jesse begins to hear the voice Ray heard.  Jesse begins painting while what seems to be in a trance.  He paints a picture of an upside down crucifix.  As things with Jesse escalate, Ray shows up at their house and tries to make friends with their daughter.  Like Ray, she also likes “Flying V” guitars.  Jesse doesn’t like seeing Ray around his daughter and chases him away.  That’s when things really get weird.

 

 

What follows is another take on the classic satanic possession story.  This one is a little different in that the person possessed by the demonic spirit is really working on getting Jesse’s daughter as the younger the spirit the sweeter it tastes.  Hence the title as to “Him” it tastes like candy.  The story is OK, and for the most part average until the last few minutes which is really the best part of the film.  What really stands out though is the heavy metal soundtrack that is used for the film.  The movie, like the music is harsh, dirty, and comes at a breakneck pace.

 

 

The Devil’s Candy is not as good as Byrne’s first film, The Loved One’s as I mentioned earlier.  That was exceptional where this was just slightly better than average.  If this was Byrne’s first film it would have had as many expectations to live up to.  I didn’t hate it and I didn’t love so that means that this a perfect example of three rolls of duct tape out five.  You might like this a lot more than I did, lots of people do, so maybe give it a try.

 

 

The Countdown to Halloween Day 3 The Ritual (2017)

 

 

 

When I first read the synopsis of this one, another film with nearly the same title came to mind.  Rituals, from 1977, is about five men who go hiking in a remote area of Canada to rough it in the wilderness.  Hal Holbrook starred, and I gave it two and a half out of five.  I wanted to watch this to see if a remake would be any better.  The Ritual is directed by David Bruckner (The Night House and The Signal) taken from the 2011 novel of the same name.  Wait a hot minute!  Rituals (the one with Hal Holbrook) is way older than that and wasn’t taken from any book.  I guess this isn’t a remake.  OK, fine, let’s go on.  This film is about a group of five college friends who go on vacation together in a remote part of Sweden.  Well, four go, one of them is killed before they even finalize their plans to go.  Well, that sounds familiar, so you see where I originally thought it was a remake.

 

The four men are hiking through Kunglseden which is a hiking trail that stretches out to nearly 300 miles.  Soon after they begin their trip one of the men, Dom, falls and injures his knee and is left nearly unable to walk.  Whoa!  In Rituals, one of the five friends falls and breaks his leg or ankle or something like that.  So, this really isn’t a remake?  WTF?  Well, after Dom falls and hurts his knee, the group decide to venture off the marked trail (first mistake) and go through the forest to shorten the trip.

 

Now this forest is what is known as “an old growth forest” which means it has been allowed to grow nearly undisturbed for a long time.  This leads to things happening in the forest that usually doesn’t occur in a forest that has people trekking through it on the reg.  Once these guys enter the forest, inevitably shit starts to go down.  I’ll tell you the first weird thing that happens and then the rest is up to you to decide if you want to see or not.

 

 Not long after they enter the forest, they find a large elk gutted and hanging from a tree.  All the surrounding trees have odd symbols carved into them.  That night, a monsoon hits, and they spend the night in a cabin they find.  In the cabin they discover necklaces with symbols on them that are like the ones on the trees they had seen earlier.  And that is where I will leave off because things get increasingly worse and the guys are in for a world of hurt. 

 

Before I go back to deciding if this is a remake or not let’s talk about the actors.  Starring is Rafe Spall (Hot Fuzz and Shaun of the Dead) as Luke, Arsher Ali (Four Lions and A Patch of Fog) is Phil, Robert James-Collier (Downton Abbey) is Hutch, and Sam Troughton (Chernobyl and Mank) is Dom, the guy who hurts his knee causing all this mess.  He’s also Patrick Troughton’s grandson which makes him Doctor Who royalty, kind of, so I’ll give him a little bit of a pass.  He’s not completely off the hook though his clumsy ass started all this. 

 

The Ritual was not shot in Sweden interestingly enough, but rather in the Carpathian Mountains of Romania.  Romania just so happens to be where my ancestors are from.  Well according to Ancestry dot com is concerned anyway.  And if there is one thing I know about the Carpathian Mountains it’s that you don’t want to screw around with them.  Especially a big dark forest in the middle of them.  No matter how spooky or beautiful they may be because the forest is both spooky (at night) and gorgeous (during the day).  It’s also spooky in the day too.

 

OK, let’s get into it; the book the story is based on was written by Adam Neville who specializes in writing supernatural horror.  After doing some digging there’s no definitive proof that Neville ripped off the 1977 movie.  Although at first, it was claimed this was not a rip off at all and then after some back pedaling it was stated that it wasn’t a complete rip off.  Which means it is absolutely a rip off of the 1977 movie.  I mean even the title is almost the same.  Rituals from 1977 is also at least partially a rip off of Deliverance as well so what do I know.  The big question is how was The Ritual?  Well, I have to admit it’s pretty damn good.  Great cinematography.  A creepy story set in a creepy forest and when the “monster” is fully revealed it is impressive.  I mean I stared in awe.  So, I will have to go three and a half convenience store robberies out of five for Ritual which is definitely not a rip off.  Of any kind.  At all.  Probably.