The year 2010 will be a treat. In this coming year, a new John Carpenter film, The Ward, will be released. It will be his first film since Ghosts of Mars, from way back in the far distant days of 2001. This has been a long layoff for the director — the longest in his career. One could easily have concluded that Carpenter had retired, maybe not completely with his own consent. The backend of Carpenter’s directorial career has been one box office bomb after another, none of the films able to capture or build upon the mastery of schlock, and horror, that he showed in his peak days three decades ago. His professional tale is one of the inevitable slide that all creative people who live long enough go through eventually. Depressing? It shouldn’t be, because even though his films have kept getting shittier and shittier, he still had the skill to crank out something like Vampires, a film that just reeks John Carpenter from start to finish. Continue reading “October Horrorshow: Vampires”
Tag: Supernatural Flick
October Horrorshow: Event Horizon
Mix one part huge spaceship, one part small cast, and one part gore, blend on high, and what do you get? Alien. Or one of the many Alien clones that have dotted sci-fi cinema for the last thirty years. Not that there’s anything wrong with that. Formulas in film that work well are often repeated ad nauseam, and while they never quite live up to the creative spirit at work in the original, they still serve to entertain, and that is the primary purpose of film. Even Alien itself is derivative of earlier films, most notably It! The Terror from Beyond Space, including many, many other sci-fi and horror films that portray a small group of people being mercilessly slaughtered one by one. But these days, where there’s outer space and buckets of blood, there is a debt of gratitude owed to Ridley Scott and his crew from 1979. Continue reading “October Horrorshow: Event Horizon”
October Horrorshow: Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter
Tom Savini, as with Martin Becker before you, I salute you. In a film that otherwise struggled at times to hold my attention, the exquisite onscreen deaths perpetrated by Jason Voorhees and engineered by Savini saved the day. From the morgue attendant attacked with a hacksaw and a vicious neck twist, to the harpoon crotch lift, to the young lover whose skull is crushed against a shower wall, to the most brutal machete attack put to film since Apocalypse Now, there wasn’t much that was mailed in, and I have a suspicion a good deal hit the cutting room floor to bring the film down to an ‘R’ rating. All that sweet, sweet blood, and the occasional chest shot, is really the only draw to the film. Juvenile? No doubt, yet Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter is still a sight better than most films in the Friday the 13th franchise. Continue reading “October Horrorshow: Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter”
October Horrorshow: The Legend of Hell House
The fear that we create in our minds in anticipation of unpleasant events is more often than not more powerful than the event itself. Also, the actions of unseen forces are more unsettling than those by forces we can see, and can thus relate to and understand. Along these lines, in horror cinema, the most frightening ghosts are of the unseen variety. They make their presence felt by being menacing, by toying with those who trespass on their realm. They make noise. They bang, shuffle, and walk loudly across hardwood floors. They spark chills and cold winds. They speak, threaten and cajole. Eventually they move things around, simply and quickly, such as doors opening and closing by themselves, books falling off of shelves, etc. It’s usually around here that the separation is made between good ghost films and bad ghost films.
Good ghost films try their best to maintain the creepiness of an unseen entity’s actions, even while the audience is quickly growing accustomed to being in a haunted house or hotel, or wherever. Bad ghost films just chuck all restraint and set up a titanic battle between good and evil, slave to special effects under the belief that seeing a big bad scary ghost in an explosive finale is what the audience craves after spending the first half of the film scared out of their wits. Continue reading “October Horrorshow: The Legend of Hell House”
October Horrorshow: 1408
For about half the film, Mikael Håfström’s 1408, based on the Stephen King short story of the same name, is creepy and frightening. By then, the viewer has grown used to Mike Enslin’s (John Cusack) predicament, and the film has no other alternative than to fall into convention. That’s unfortunate, because if Håfström had been able to sustain the atmosphere of the first half throughout the film, it would rank among the best ghost films of all time. A lot can be said for a film with potential like that. Continue reading “October Horrorshow: 1408″
October Horrorshow, Retroactive: Prince of Darkness
Victor Wong will kick your ass with a chopstick and a can of Shasta.
This is attempt number five. The fifth time I’ve begun a review of John Carpenter’s Prince of Darkness. Hopefully, I’ll be able to finish this effort. Suppose I start with a declarative statement, then justify it with an argument? Sounds like a plan. Continue reading “October Horrorshow, Retroactive: Prince of Darkness”
October Horrorshow, Retroactive: 30 Days of Night
The film 30 Days of Night, adapted from the popular graphic novel, was marketed as a modern update on classical vampires. A break from pattern, these creatures of the night were more fearsome, more violent, more bloodthirsty, than any that had been onscreen before. Indeed, the vampires of 30 Days of Night are not Anne Rice’s cultured charmers, nor are they the stealthy apparitions of Bram Stoker, although their physical appearance pays homage to the Dracula of the classic film Nosferatu.
These vampires are more animalistic, with little inclination to wipe away the blood after a successful hunt. They speak a guttural language meant to evoke an ancient mystique, with faces twisted into grotesque snarls. They maintain only a tenuous connection to humanity. In fact, they can hardly be considered human at all, vampirism becoming more than just an affliction or a state of mind. Here it is an addiction that changes a person into something else, a different species born from man, yet not of him. Everything about them is more, but it’s not new. For the characters in the film, it is akin to the difference between legend and fact, where all the cultural knowledge one has absorbed about vampires encounters a reality that lacks the politeness built up by layers and layers of popcorn horror. So, as far as the monsters in the film are concerned, mission accomplished. Continue reading “October Horrorshow, Retroactive: 30 Days of Night”