31 Days of Halloween - Day 13 - Movie

When a large box, which happens to be a coffin, is delivered to a lakeside residence, all manner of menacing and strange phenomena begin to torment poor Akiko. To her boyfriend it appears that her grip on sanity is eroding, due to some childhood trauma she experienced on that Lake,which she believes never actually happened. How could it have? It was too horrible. But, Akiko soon discovers that her childhood visit to a hidden European styled mansion which contained a dead woman, and a vampire was very real. Now the vampire is back to claim her.

Lake of Dracula (1971) was the second of Toho's Western inspired vampire movies. This one, even with it's Japanese sensibility, and dream-like narrative, is clearly patterned on Hammer's Horror of Dracula (1958). The vampire is very much in the Christopher Lee mold; tall, noble, but with an animal-like ferocity when on the offensive. The vampire here, actually comes of as even more feral than Lee's Dracula. The ending is directly lifted from Horror of Dracula. These movies are oddities in that they are visually stylish, and fairly mesmerizing to watch, but there's not much going on beneath the superficial veneer. They're a very entertaining viewing experience, but that experience seems to dissipate rather quickly when they are over.

31 Days of Halloween - Day 13

I watch a lot of horror movies during the month of October. With the exception of 2016, and 2017, during which I rewetted old favorites, I've blogged about each of them here during Countdown's past and present. Here's a list of everything I've watched during the Countdown beginning with 2006 and ending with 2014. If you're stumped for something to watch, or something to avoid watching, give it a look.

31 Days of Halloween - Day 12 - Movie

When Keiko's brother fails to return from a visit to his girlfriend, Yuko, she takes her fiancé, Hiroshi to find out what happened to him. Yuko's mother claims he left after he found out that Yuko had been killed in a car accident just a few weeks ago. But, something isn't right. Keiko spots Yuko. Hiroshi investigates strange sounds, but is halted in his investigation by Yuko's mother, and attacked by her mute manservant, Genzo. After investigating in town, Keiko is more certain that Yuko is alive and that her brother is somewhere in that house. Hiroshi turns up something strange at Yuko's grave, leading to two deaths. What Yuko discovers is even worse.

The Vampire Doll (1970) is the first film in a trilogy of Western style vampire movies made by Toho Studios in the 1970s. The feel is very much as if Toho made Hammer movies, but with a Japanese sensibility fused onto it. Visually it's striking, and it has a very dreamlike feel to it as the plot unfolds. The cast is quite good, though these aren't any actors I recognize from anything else. I'm finally seeing this for the first time on glorious bluray, but it feels like a movie that I would have caught at 11:30 at night on a UHF channel way back when, and that's a complement. In a month of viewing more misses than hits, so far, this one's a win.

31 Days of Halloween - Day 12

Nothing beats werewolves drawn by the great Bernie Wrightson. Here are a bunch of them.

31 Days of Halloween - Day 11 - Movie

Three teenage girls use a ouija board in an attempt to contact Verónica's deceased father during a solar eclipse. They contact something, and whatever it is it's malignant and has no intention of leaving Verónica.

Verónica (2017) has a really nice build up and anchors itself in the mundane world of a high school girl almost single-handedly raising her three young siblings while their mostly absentee mother works an exhausting job late into the night. This ads a layer of vulnerability as we begin to question Verónica's mental state and whether or not the supernatural threat might be all in her mind. The children she's trying to keep safe may be in increasing danger just by her presence. In the end, though, Verónica doesn't quite get where it needs to. The build up, as I mentioned, works quite well, but the supernantural assaults, if that's what they are, aren't presented with much suspense, or real cohesion. It's often hard to tell what's going on.  There's also a bit of a distance between viewer and the the onscreen characters which keeps us from getting too involved with them when we need to most. The climax itself falls short of being a real payoff either. Based, loosely, on a real life incident which included the first time a police officer claimed to have witnessed paranormal events in their official paperwork, the end may have suffered from a perceived need to keep things close to actual events.

31 Days of Halloween - Day 11

The inside of our house gets decorated for Halloween in varying degrees of extravagance depending on time and the house we're in. This year things have pretty much been contained to the living room. Some of the decorations that can be found in our house, though not always all of these every year, can be found here and here.

31 Days of Halloween - Day 10 - Movie

Michelle (Mary Elizabeth Winstead) flees from her relationship and ends up in a car accident. When she comes to, she finds herself shackled to a wall in an underground bunker, where her rescuer, Howard (John Goodman) claims he's saved her from some sort of apocalypse that's happened up on the surface. She'll now indefininately be his guest, along with Emmett (John Gallagher, Jr.) a young man he took in just as the unknown disaster was breaking out. There's something off about Howard. There's a strong physical and psychological threat that emanates from him, and as the story unfolds, Howard's story starts to show some holes. Now Michelle has to convince Emmett help her find a means of escaping in order to find out what's really going on.

10 Cloverfield Lane (2016) has no direct connection to Cloverfield (2008), "except its DNA", says producer J. J. Abrams, who saw the "Cloverfield" title as something of an anthology of unconnected, but like-minded films. This is a tight, suspenseful film, with outstanding performances. Goodman provides a hulking socially awkward menace, and Gallagher a not so bright homebody full of regrets. Instead shines in a performance that is able to externally project internal activity. We can see her thought processes carried out through her expressions and body language. She's constantly thinking, inventing, improvising, and fighting to find a way out of her situation, and we root for her every step of the way. This was my third viewing of this film, and I still find it pulls you in the whole time. 

31 Days of Halloween - Day 10

Every town seems to have at least one creepy, old decrepit house, one that looks perfect for Halloween every day, but also one that no trick or treaters would set foot near, not even on a dare. Movies have tons of these houses. You can find some of the best creepy houses from cinema here, here and here.

31 Days of Halloween - Day 9 - Movie

In Abbott and Costello Meet the Invisible Man (1951), the two comedians graduate from a detective school. Their fist case involves a boxer who escapes from prison after being sentenced for the murder of his manager. The boxer wants to clear his name, and while they work their investigation against a group of crooks who fix fights, the boxer hides via the use of the invisibility formula used by Jack Griffin in the original The Invisible Man (1933).

Universal hit gold by combining the creaky comedy duo with their creaky monsters to great effect in Abbot and Costello Meet Frankenstein (1948), where the pairing made both the funny men and the monsters shine. No such luck for this outing which is just simply not that funny. What should have been a comedic standout with Lou in the boxing ring and the invisible boxer doing the actual fighting for him, was clumsily staged and seemed to go on for far too long. Overall, with this movie, there isn't much to see.

31 Days of Halloween - Day 9

One of the absolute best home haunt gimmicks I've ever seen can be found here. It's a classic and you can recreate it, or something similar yourself.

31 Days of Halloween - Day 8, Movie

Greta (Lauren Cohan), a young American woman, flees an abusive relationship by taking a nanny job at an enormous mansion in the rural UK. She is barely introduced to Brahms, her charge who is an inanimate doll, before the parents are off to a much needed rest. Greta is left with a list of rules to follow in caring for Brahms, and the occasional company of Malcolm (Rupert Evans), a young local man who delivers the groceries. Brahms is a stand-in for the departed couples son who is said to have died in a fire twenty years ago. As Greta spends time alone in the house with Brahms, strange things start to happen and she becomes convinced that the spirit of the real Brahms inhabits the doll which seems to be animate. The question then becomes is Brahms a good spirit, or a bad one?

The Boy (2016) starts out promising with a great location, strong cast, beautiful cinematography, and what seems to be a serious attempt to tell a decent story, but its obvious really early one where the story is going to go, and even when a twisty element is introduced, which spoils everything the filmmakers set out to accomplish, the film goes exactly where you think it is. Along the way, there are some gaps in the storytelling that keep this movie from ever becoming more than a surface level thriller.

Also, if you are going to make a movie about a creepy doll, have the doll be creepy -- I don't mean over the top Annabelle creepy, but Brahms looks like a 3-D anime drawing, with features that are a bit somber, but well mannered. He's not frightening in the least. Because of this, it's hard to ever think that Greta could ever be in danger from Brahms.

31 Days of Halloween - Day 8

Though this wasn't part of a previous Halloween Countdown, it does exemplify the season. Here's what I found out when investigating one of the props found at the Haunted Mansion in Disneyland.

31 Days of Halloween - Day 7 - Movie 2

In The Shape of Water (2017) Elisa, a mute cleaning woman at a secret military facility outside of Baltimore, befriends, then falls in love with, the amphibious humanoid that is being kept there for experimentation. He sympathy for the fish-man lead her to wanting to save him from the true monster of the story, Strickland, the creature's keeper. This leads to a daring rescue carried out by the people that society ignores; a mute cleaning woman, a black cleaning woman, a gay man, and a spy with a conscience.

Guillermo Del Toro's romantic fairy tale set in the Cold War era 1962, won pretty much every award there was. Deservedly so. It is probably his best movie (though not my favorite). The script is superb, the art direction flawless, and the cast phenomenal, bringing layers of nuance to their archetypes. Everything comes together to form a perfect love letter to classic monster films and classic cinema in general. If you haven't seen it yet, you need to.

31 Days of Halloween - Day 7 - Movie 1

Today's viewing is of two very different movies involving merpeople. The first one is The Lure (2015) is about two mermaid sisters who come ashore in Poland for adventures among the humans, and who become strippers and back-up singers in a sleazy nightclub. The movie is a visual delight, but often seems all over the place, often to the point of losing sight of what it wants to be. Even through all of the distraction there are two parallel plot threads which hold it all together. The mermaids depicted straddle to line between Hans Christian Andersen's The Little Mermaid and the more monstrous mermaids of folklore. Silver, tragically, falls in love with the bass player of the band, and goes to horrible lengths to obtain true womanhood from the waist down, while Golden becomes increasingly consumed with hostility as her sister grows apart from her, and she finds it harder and harder to resist her own vampiric urges to feed on the humans who only want to exploit them.

As a horror-musical, The Lure is certainly not for everyone, but it's compelling to watch in its novelty. Marta Mazurek and Michelina Olszanska are riveting as the mermaid sisters, at once vulnerable and threatening, but always sympathetic.

31 Days of Halloween - Day 7

Cemeteries and Halloween go hand in hand. When we think of cemeteries, and Halloween decor based on them, we think of something akin to the photo above. In my searches online, I've found a lot of headstones, and tombs that are quite different than that. Quite different. You can see some weird ones right here.

31 Days of Halloween - Day 6 - Movie 2

In Curtains (1983) a group of young actresses head to a director's mansion to compete for the role of Audra in his next movie. They are killed off one by one by a killer in an old hag mask.

This movie seems to have a following, so I decided to take a look, even though I'm not a fan of the slasher subgenre. That status has not changed. The actresses are all very similar looking, even though each is defined by a single trait; ice skater, dancer, slut, etc. Their deaths are all improbably staged. A doll standing by the roadside that attracts no other motorist other than the intended victim. Another victim running through the woods, leans back against a tree to catch her breath. Guess who not only secretly kept pace with her, but happened to be waiting behind that very tree.

This movie was really dull and disjointed, which makes sense given it's trouble production. Tension between the director and producer over the tone of the film led to the director quitting with only 45 minutes shot. The rest would be filmed a year later. The whole film is just a boring mess. The hag? Not scary in the least.

31 Days of Halloween - Day 6 - Movie 1

In the Texas backwoods, a bunch of people keep showing up at rundown hotel that looks like it hasn't seen a guest in ages. The hotel owner is a big guy with some serious issues and a huge crocodile that lives in the swamp abutting the hotel's deck. The purpose of all of these guests stopping by the hotel is to provide fodder for Judd to feed his pet. Oh, and Judd likes to use a full-sized scythe to dispatch his victims first.

Eaten Alive was Tobe Hooper's follow up to his masterpiece, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974). Loosely based on a true story, it lacks the raw, cinema vertité feeling that made TCM so successful. It's a mean, ugly movie with a grating soundtrack of near constant screaming and a painful electronic score. It's probably best viewed in an early 1980s 42nd street grind house, or not at all. This was a pretty dismal viewing experience. It may hold some curiosity for appearances by Carolyn Jones, Mel Ferrer, and Robert Englund. Every character in this movie is a disposable role.

31 Days of Halloween - Day 6

Above is a cut paper recreation of a Collegeville mask of the Metaluna Mutant from Universal's This Island Earth (1955) that I did as a private commission.

At this link you'll find a Halloween related piece I did just for the fun of it back when I was in college.

31 Days of Halloween - Day 5 - Movie

We know all of the elements of the home invasion movie; masked killer(s), isolation from the nearest neighbors, cut power, the arrival of a neighbor and possible salvation, improvised weapons made out of household items. Husband and wife team (Absentia, Oculus)of Writer/Director Mike Flanagan and Writer/Star Kate Siegel know them too and make the effort to use those elements to their advantage in Hush (2016).

The story is pretty simple and straight forward. A deaf writer (Kate Siegel) is living in an isolated house as she struggles with her second novel. One night a masked stranger (John Gallagher, Jr.) arrives and chooses to terrorize her before killing her, using her deafness to his advantage.

Kate Siegel's character is one you can sympathize with, not because of her deafness, but because she is presented as a real person before the assault begins. She's smart and courageous and thinks before acting, making it seem entirely plausible that she's going to turn the tables on her attacker, who comes of as not the smartest, or most effective serial murderer. He comes of as a bit of an amateur, even though the notches on his crossbow tell is this is far from his first outing, and that maybe we are underestimating him. The best aspect of this film is that the outcome is never certain. Right up to the finish, there are no assurances that the writer is going to best her attacker, and it's just as likely that she's going to be one more notch on his crossbow.

31 Days of Halloween - Day 5

Halloween would not be Halloween without the headless horseman from Washington Irving's  The Legend of Sleepy Hollow riding through. You can examine my posts about the headless horseman here, here, here, here, here, and here.