Just Before Dawn

The 1980's saw the explosion of the slasher movie genre and of all the films released some are more well known than other.  Until recently I had never heard of this one but I read a few good things about it and once I had the chance to pick it up for five bucks at this years Monster Mania Convention I decided to give it a chance.  The film stars Chris Lemmon (son of the great Jack Lemmon), Gregg Henry (a character actor who has appeared in film and television for forty years,  Jamie Rose (Falcon Crest and Lady Blue), and George Kennedy (Cool Hand Luke, Airport, and The Naked Gun series) who are the only actors you've possibly heard of before with the rest of them not doing much other than this film.  Jeff Lieberman ( Squirm, Blue Sunshine, and Satan's Little Helper) directed and wrote the screenplay.  He claims he was heavily influenced by Deliverance while he was writing it and it definitely shows in the final product.  The movie was called Survivance when it was released overseas to try and cash in on the fact it resembles Deliverance which was still very popular in Europe at the time.

 While most of the cast does a serviceable job here the best performances come from Katie Powell, John Hunsaker, Hap Oslund, and Barbara Spencer who play the hillbilly mountain family that the group of twenty somethings run into while camping in the Oregon woods.  The other best part of the film is the scenery which is captured beautifully by cinematographers Dean and Joel King.  Also setting the creepy atmosphere is the music which is supplied by Brad Feidel who also did the score for the first two Terminator films, Fright Night, The Serpent and The Rainbow, and Gladiator just to name a few. 

Some of the films best moments come when the killer laughs which he does throughout the film.  It sets a contrasting creepy feeling to the kills and it gives the same effect that the "dahhh-dum" piano notes do when we know Jaws is about to eat another victim.  There's also some creepy whistling that can be heard in the soundtrack as well that gave me chills whenever I would hear it.  Not to be confused with the horn Chris Lemmon blows, well  that thing was just annoying.  Mostly everything else is forgettable or at least there's nothing new here so it doesn't offer a memorable viewing experience but it good enough for a $5 special.  So with all that being said I can string together 3 Rope Bridges out of 5 for this one.        

"You can't kill the boogeyman!" ~ Tommy

 

Here's one that while not a Halloween song it has a great video that fits right in:

The Time Has Come.

I met this six-year-old child, with this blank, pale, emotionless face, and the blackest eyes... the devil's eyes. I spent eight years trying to reach him, and then another seven trying to keep him locked up because I realized that what was living behind that boy's eyes was purely and simply... evil. 

 

You do the math:

The Many Deaths of Michael Myers:

Death has come to your little town, Sheriff. ~ Dr. Loomis

Back in the 1970's I had some sort of movie player that had a bunch of short movies that I could watch whenever I wanted. One of the movies I had and still love to this day was Lonesome Ghost by Disney. In it Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck, and Goofy are troubled with ghosts.   Now, some 40 years later here I am posting it one a blog. 

Here's another Disney Halloween cartoon

And another this one slightly before my time from 1929 called The Haunted House

And finally a more modern day Mickey Mouse cartoon called Ghoul Friend

Dr. Terror's House of Horror 1965

In 1965 Amicus Productions released the first of it's horror anthology Dr. Terror's House of Horror.  It was the first of seven horror anthology films that Amicus would release over the next decade.  The film was written by Milton Subotsky who was one of the founders of Amicus.  He wrote the screenplay with the 1945 anthology movie Dead of Night in mind which is a horror classic and one of the best horror anthologies ever made.  Freddie Francis directed but is better known for his work as a cinematographer for which he won two academy awards for Sons and Lovers and Glory. 

The wraparound story takes place on a train where five passengers are joined by Dr. Schrenk (Peter Cushing) who tells the other men his name in German means "terror".  He reveals a deck of Tarot cards he calls a "house of horrors" so now you know where the title comes from.  Dr. Terror is joined by Christopher Lee (of course!), Neil McCallum, Alan Freeman, Roy Castle, and Donald Sutherland.  This was Sutherland's third credited film role of his career and he was paid just 1,000 pounds for his work which would have been about $2500 dollars at the time.  I really can't tell you the titles of the five different stories as they were not given titles as much as they were labeled with the subject or situation happening in each story.  I liked the stories in order of how they are presented in the film meaning my least favorite is the first story and they improved from there with Lee's and Sutherland's being the fourth and fifth stories and the best two of the film by far.

There comes a time when an actor or actress is able to transcend films and roles and no matter what is going on around them they are still able to put in a remarkable performance.  We have that here especially from Lee, Cushing, and Sutherland.  Not that the rest of the stars are not good it just seems they also happen to be there.  If this was a Star Trek episode the others would be wearing red shirts.  The first story is boring, the second one is more funny than anything, the third is typical and I found it hard to pay attention to them.  The final two stories as I said were the best as well as the wrap around story which I also enjoyed.  Cushing is surprisingly creepy here which is something I am not used to as he is usually the one playing the straight man in horror films.  Thankfully the film is more fun than anything else and that's fine but I really had my heart set on something better as I've heard so many good things about this one.  I liked it but I wanted to like it more.  The film is worth watching for Cushing's work and the final two stories alone.  Three out of five tarot cards for this one.  The Horror Honey was not as kind and gives it two and a half.

I spent eight years trying to reach him, and then another seven trying to keep him locked up because I realized that what was living behind that boy's eyes was purely and simply... evil.

Here's a couple for the really little fans of Halloween:

Happy Samhain

It's A Halloween Free For All 

Nightmare on Elm Street

   The 70's and 80's serial killer/slasher boom brought about the creation of icons such as Leatherface, Michael Myers, Jason Voorhees and 1984's saw the birth of yet another name to the list, Freddy Krueger.  Written and directed by the late great Wes Craven, Freddy would enter your dreams or nightmares and you know the rule: if you die in your dream you die for real.  The story gave a new twist to the serial killer genre as it brought the dreamworld into play and gave new dimension to the horrors to befall on our hapless victims.  The original film in the franchise, of course, stars Robert England as Freddy, Heather Langencamp as Nancy the heroine of the first story and Freddy's first "final girl", John Saxon as Heather's father who is also the sheriff, Ronee Blakley (Nashville) plays Heather's mother who has a lot to do with the legend of Freddy Krueger, and Johnny Depp in the first feature film role of his career.

 This was the one that the foundation of the Elm Street franchise was built upon.  The birth of Freddy Krueger child killer and supernatural serial killer that even death couldn't stop.  Oddly enough the only issue I have with the film is with Heather Langencamp's performance.  I found her to be a little uneven meaning she was over dramatic when she didn't need to be and was a little low key when she should have been a little more commanding if she knew peoples lives were on the line.  Everything else in the first Nightmare film is creepy good fun and it's done nearly to perfection.  I always enjoy this one.

When you first hear the jump rope song and hear the knives screeching across the metal pipe you know you are in Freddy's world and there's no rules there.  Except for the ones Freddy makes and then breaks.  The music performed by Charles Bernstein adds a dream like quality to every scene it's in offering a nice dose of asymmetry that really keeps you off balance and not knowing where the "safe scenes" are coming.  There's plenty more films to the franchise (including the latest film, the attempted reboot, that failed miserably) and they all have some great scenes and some are very good films however, you never forget your first time with Freddy.  The Horror Honey and I were joined by my 75 year old Auntie Grizelda for this one and we all agreed that this one is a classic.  We all give this one 4 Brown Fedoras out of 5.      

Mysery 1990

Oh hey look, another Stephen King novel turned into a film.  This one is from 1990 and stars James Caan plays Paul Sheldon an author who crashes his car on a snowy road and is saved by his number one fan, Annie Wilkes (Kathy Bates) who doesn't necessarily have Caan's best interests in mind.  The film is directed by Rob Reiner while Robert Goldman (Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, The Princess Bride) wrote the screenplay.  Also co-starring is Frances Sternhagen, Richard Farnsworth, and Lauren Bacall. 

This one is about as good as a Stephen King novel turned film can get.  Caan is great as the victim to Bates' psychopathic mood swings.  One minute she loves him and the next moment she is breaking his legs with a sledgehammer.  The "hobbling" scene is still one of the hardest scenes for me to watch that has ever put on screen.  Bates would go on to win an Oscar for the Best Supporting Actress category.  Yes, a Stephen King movie actually won an Oscar.  What can you say about her performance?  Bates was an unknown talent before the movie came out so this left us all with quite a first impression. 

The film remained very faithfully to the novel and all of the tension and suspense from the novel actually transferred over exceptionally well.  Reiner took the screenplay, that he worked very closely with during the adaption, and got exactly what he wanted from his actors.  When I was writing about this it surprised me that Barry Sonnenfeld was the cinematographer of the movie.  When I think of his name I think of the Men In Black movies as well as The Addams Family movies.  Of course I also think of him as a director not as a cinematographer so that explains some of the breathtaking shots that are featured throughout the film.  The Horror Honey and I both give the film 4 COCK - A - DOODIE CARS out of 5.  My Auntie Grizelda was with us for this one and she gives this one 3 and a half which is big for her considering she actually likes this one.     

Monsters 2010

Before Gareth Edwards directed Rogue One, he wrote and directed this sci-fi creature feature in 2010.  It was the first feature film of his career.  He also did the cinematography, production design, and visual effects for the film.  Aside from himself only five other people worked on the film not counting the actors and it was shot in three weeks and cost around $500,000 to make.  In many scenes locals were used as extras and given outlines for plot points but no script and rolled cameras and filmed the ad libs to edit later which worked surprisingly well.  The character development and interaction is some of the better parts of the movie.  The movie did very well at the box office considering it's budget and earned over four million dollars.  The two main characters of the film are Andrew Kaulder (Scoot McNairy), a professional photographer, and Samantha Wynden (Whitney Able) the daughter of Kaulder's boss.  Kaulder is forced to escort Wynden back to the US after she is stranded somewhere in Mexico which is considered the "infected zone" after an alien invasion. 

McNairy and Able work well together throughout the movie and as their characters relationship develops the movie plots along at a great pace.  Even when the creatures are not on screen we are never allowed to forget about their presence as we are always made to feel they could show up at any second.  The creatures, in fact, end up being secondary and it feels like we are watching a budding romance road movie that also happens to have gigantic aliens around that might kill them.  They also have more to worry than the aliens there are also human monsters around who are finely disguised as ferry boat employees that continue to raise the price of a ferry ticket as the danger draws closer and closer to where they are.  Once they get to America things are not as better as they had hope it would be.

It is in the movies strengths that we find some of it's weaknesses however as due do all the time spent on the relationship building we don't see the monsters a great deal.  Unfortunately that doesn't make the times we do see the "Monsters" a special occasion either as you would think it would but for some reason it feels like it actually detracts from it.  This spells trouble for the film as we have a movie titled "Monsters" that doesn't have a lot of monsters in it.  Some may be okay with that and if so all the better for you it just felt like I needed the monsters to more than just look frightening I needed to see them do more in the film and not just see the aftermath of their invasion.  Perhaps the film needed to take place more closely to the beginning of the invasion as six years after is where our story begins making the main characters seem a little jaded with it all at times.  Perhaps the problem comes with how the movie is sold, Love In The Time Of Monsters might have been a better title for this one (of course that would have made the unrelated 2014 movie that is actually titled this to look for a new name) and alerted viewers that were seeing a love story AND a monster picture.  Of course maybe I'm just complaining too much.  I give it 2 and half giant tentacles out of 5.  The Horror Honey gives it 3 stars and claims it's a chick flick monster movie.  Maybe that's where the film really finds it's viewers and if that's the case then for that it is a huge success.  Doesn't change me grade but it helps me understand the film better.      

Carrie 2013

 Usually I'm not a big fan of remakes of older films.  Sometimes they are better than the original but they are few and far between.  So after saying that we have this remake of a 1974 film which based on the novel by Stephen King.  This version does not claim to be based on the novel but rather claims it is a re-imagining of the novel.  I am a huge King fan and I really liked the first film version starring Sissy Spacek and John Travolta.  Here we have Chloe-Grace Moretz as the title character with Julianne Moore playing her troubled and religious fanatic mother.  Also starring is Judy Greer as Carrie's teacher who takes a liking to the odd student after a bunch of girls tease her when Carrie has her period during gym class.  Rounding out the cast is Gabriella Wilde is Sue Snell who feels guilty as she was one of the girls teasing Carrie and tries to make amends by having her boyfriend take Carrie to the prom.  Ansel Elgort plays Tommy, Sue's boyfriend who takes Carrie to the prom in an attempt to make Carrie feel accepted.  If you know the story you already know things don't go well.

 Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa (Glee, Riverdale) wrote the screenplay while Kimberly Peirce (Boys Don't Cry, Stop-Loss) handled the directing.  Everyone had their work cut out for them with this one.  When you are redoing a film that in my opinion didn't need a remake you are walking in dangerous territory.  Surprisingly everyone does their job and while the film doesn't have any blaring issues it's just not as good as the original.  It's not particular bad it's just not memorable and it doesn't change any of the story enough to make it stand out on it's own.  I have to put this one is the category of a film that is actually lesser than all of it's parts. 

Moore and Greer are the two actresses that really stand out for me in this one and while I am a fan of Moretz, she just didn't do it for me as Carrie here.  She was OK just not as good as Spacek's version and whenever you are watching an actor or actress play a role made famous by someone else it's hard not to wish you were watching the '74 version.  It just never gets over that hump for me.  The Horror Honey and I both gave this one 3 and a half Buckets of Pig Blood out of 5.  We also had Auntie Grizelda on hand for this one.  She is also a huge King fan and she was very critical of this one and she only gave it 3 out of 5.  She's a tough one folks!