I remember being a child in the 1980s, and movies from the 1950s looked old. The people in them wore weird clothes, had strange haircuts, and drove ridiculous-looking cars. Everything was in black and white, too, making me think, probably up until I was in kindergarten, that the world used to be black and white, and sometime during my parents’ childhoods, all of a sudden it snapped into color. I vaguely remember asking them about that. Oh, the conclusions a child’s mind will come to absent any other information. Continue reading “October Horrorshow: Poltergeist (2015)”
Tag: Horror Flick
October Horrorshow: Shivers
Has David Cronenberg ever made a movie that wasn’t about sex? On some level, probably not. There’s also nothing wrong with that, despite the prudish direction the moral majority has taken the United States in the last 35 years or so. Good thing for us that Cronenberg is a Canadian, right?
Shivers, from 1975, is Cronenberg’s first feature film, and it is all about sex. It’s not a fetish exploration like his later film, Crash, but sex is a central theme. In Shivers, a well-meaning but certifiably insane doctor named Hobbes (Fred Doederlein) has infected a resident of a new residential tower in Montreal with a parasite. The mad doctor told his financial backers and research partners that he was developing a new method to regrow organs, when in fact his true purpose was to return man to an animalistic state, a state where life would be one endless orgy. But, he screwed up, and the film opens with him trying to destroy the teenager whom he infected with the parasite. In the opening scenes, we see the doctor kill the girl and then himself, in a brutal but well done little introduction to the film that juxtaposes the modern living aspects of the apartment building with the brutal horror hidden within its walls. Even in his first film, Cronenberg starts off by showing he understands pace and storytelling. Continue reading “October Horrorshow: Shivers”
October Horrorshow: Exeter
It is a film like Exeter that makes me question this little film criticism hobby of mine. This movie is a bottom-feeding piece of shit, and no one should need any Johnny Come Lately critic to tell them so. It was released direct-to-video and has a Rotten Tomatoes rating below 30%. What more can I add? Not much, to be frank. But this film has done something meaningful when it comes to the Horrorshow. This will be the last low-budget shitfest that I found on Netflix that I will be reviewing. Netflix is a fine service...for television. But when it comes to film, Netflix is a showcase for the worst films Hollywood and elsewhere has to offer. It’s in Netflix’s interest to keep licensing fees for the movies it carries as low as possible. Producers of top-grossing films, which are still making money in direct sales, have no incentive to move their films onto something like Netflix or Amazon Prime until the money stream slows. That means that quality is subjugated to affordability, and we viewers get shit like Exeter. Continue reading “October Horrorshow: Exeter”
October Horrorshow: Creature
This piece of shit is going to be on the internet forever. Why? Because it’s in the public domain. That means it belongs to each and every one of us. We are the stewards of this film’s preservation. Oh, lordy. It also means that if any potential viewers out there see it for rent or purchase, stop before hitting the ‘buy’ button and hit the Google machine. A free viewing is just a click away. As for myself, I saw this dog on Netflix, the streaming service proving, yet again, that its profit model dictates that a large percentage of its film content is bottom-dwelling sludge. Continue reading “October Horrorshow: Creature”
October Horrorshow: Harbinger Down
Back in 2011, Amalgamated Dynamics, Inc., got screwed. ADI, an Academy Award winning practical effects company, had worked hard on the remake/prequel of The Thing. But, sometime during post-production, the decision was made to replace all of ADI’s work with CGI. The resulting effects were poorly received, and with good reason. They don’t look good. They’re the type of effects that make film buffs pine for the time before CGI was a thing, when makeup and puppetry were king in horror flicks. My biggest issue with the CGI is that it is clearly CGI. It never manages to cross over into believability. It looks like a cartoon is intruding into a live action movie. Continue reading “October Horrorshow: Harbinger Down”
October Horrorshow: The Toolbox Murders
There’s nothing quite like a 1970s exploitation horror flick. That’s not a compliment. Often such films can be entertaining if there’s a sick spot a viewer needs to scratch, but just as often it can leave a viewer feeling a little filthy by the time the credits roll. Such is the case with today’s film. Continue reading “October Horrorshow: The Toolbox Murders”
October Horrorshow: It Follows, or, The Venereal Demon
Umm...is this film mumblegore? No, it’s not. It Follows is the second feature film from David Robert Mitchell. He’s not one of the crew of filmmakers (Ti West, Adam Wingard, etc.) that have steered much of horror back to a 1970s sense of place, setting, and look and feel, but Mitchell’s film does feel like kin in many ways. I think this has a lot to do with the wider aesthetic that has come to dominate still photography in recent years. Every one of us with a smartphone has participated in it at some point. We’ve had Instagram accounts or the Hipstamatic app or any number of other apps that apply retro filters to our pics. And since everyone in this country seems to have a smartphone, the typical smartphone pics are everywhere, not just on our phones. The aesthetic is so popular that it has invaded advertising — the final indicator of cultural pervasiveness. Continue reading “October Horrorshow: It Follows, or, The Venereal Demon”
October Horrorshow: The Abominable Dr. Phibes
Vincent Price has been woefully underrepresented here in the Horrorshow, but partial restitution will be made today. Vincent Price may have spent much of his career far from the glitz and glam of big Hollywood, but that wasn’t because of a lack of skill as an actor.
Vincent Price was a bit of a rollicking performer. It didn’t matter how silly the role or the movie. In fact, the more absurd a project, the more Price seemed to enjoy what he was doing. Sometimes actors are the victims of typecasting, but in the case of Vincent Price, he thrived. Today’s film features one of Price’s most iconic roles — that of the hideously disfigured Dr. Anton Phibes. Continue reading “October Horrorshow: The Abominable Dr. Phibes”
October Horrorshow: Hatchet III
I had high hopes for this flick. Admittedly, those hopes were unrealistic. But, Hatchet II was last year’s official film of the Horrorshow, one I had a lot of fun watching, and I was looking forward to more cartoonish gore and general silliness. All the ingredients were there. Same writer/director, same stars, what looks to be the exact same sets, but this time around, the results are not the same. Continue reading “October Horrorshow: Hatchet III”
October Horrorshow: The Canal
The problem with watching so many horror films is that competent, little films like The Canal can come along and I’m not impressed or repulsed either way. That is, until I saw the ending of this one. Continue reading “October Horrorshow: The Canal”