Undeadcow

** List Final - Subset, Checklist, and Theme Nights Complete - 210 films - 11th Year **
Gems: White God, Demon, The Lure, Who's Watching Oliver?, Lovely Molly, Mon Mon Mon Monsters, Girl With All the Gifts, Summer of 84, Audition, The Wind, Butterfly Kisses, Dead Night, Creep 2
Disappointments: Sleepwalkers, Brightburn, Black Site, I Survived the Zombie Holocaust, P, Red Clover, Valentine, The Prey, Song of Solomon, Nails, Climax, Vicious Lips
Gem Reviews:



More Standouts:




Summary Viewing Stats :
Total Watched: 210 films - 323 hours, 4 minutes (92.3 minutes per film average)
By Decade: 2010s 132 | 2000s 19 | 1990s 17 | 1980s 21 | 1970s 9 | 1960s 7 | 1950s 0 | 1940s 3 | 1930s 2 | 1920s 1
By Format: Digital 206 [15 in 4K/UHD] | Theater 3 | Blu-ray 1 | DVD 0
Average Film Star (★) Rating: 5.3 stars out of 10 ★★★★★½✰✰✰✰ [5 ★ is average, less is bad and more is good][size=1]September 13 [Friday the 13th / Full Moon 'bonus day' but I'm not counting] (7 hours, 50 minutes watched)
[September 30 is Not Include In Any Summary Statistics]
00. The Snarling (2016, 84 minutes) ★★★✰✰✰✰✰✰✰ There's a few meta jokes that stick but then it devolves into the most obvious plot narrated by two 'comedic relief' cops and centered more on extras in a movie than werewolves, zombies, or anything else remotely scary/interesting. It's actively bad enough that I'm curious if the meta elements didn't overtake the film and everything is some sly tongue in cheek joke about being aggressively bad. There's a scene where they use an obvious strobe light and shaky camera to simulate a werewolf attack; which is hilarious but not the strong start I was hoping for. Eventually the stupid casualness of the film is amusing but in a way that often feel cheap and just dumb rather than scary or witty. Format: Digital [Vudu HD]. 1st
00. Another WolfCop (2017, 106 minutes) ★★★½✰✰✰✰✰✰ Gonzo enough to be fun as long as you don't take it serious and often stumbles over some of it's attempts at humor but kinetic enough to not care; it's actively stupid cartoonish popcorn carnage. The villain is gleefully over the top enough to take emphasis off WolfCop and his lame super hero invulnerability ramping up the cheesy weirdness to a level of obnoxiously intentional 'cult.' Format: Digital [Vudu HD]. 1st
00. Friday the 13th Part VI: Jason Lives (1986, 87 minutes) ★★★★★★✰✰✰✰ I've long been a fan of the film that gives us Zombie Jason, the plot has a lot going on and it's a fitting cap to the Tommy Jarvis trilogy. Format: Digital [Vudu HD].
00. Friday the 13th Part VII: The New Blood (1988, 89 minutes) ★★★★½✰✰✰✰✰ The 'weirdest' F13 (until Jason X) jumps the shark by necessity to find a fresh way to 'explain' Voorhees featuring a more robust animated Jason. Format: Digital [Vudu HD].
00. The Others (2001, 104 minutes) ★★★★✰✰✰✰✰✰ Doesn't hold up as well on repeat viewings and has some awkward elements, like photosensitive kids. Nicely atmospheric and the servant characters nail it (which is necessary because Kidman doesn't). Format: Digital [Vudu HD].

September 30 [Criterion Challenge Crossover Theme Night - starting after dusk, 7:32pm] (2 hours, 59 minutes watched)
01. Videodrome (1983, 87 minutes) ★★★★★★★½✰✰ At first I though Videodrome had more substance than it seemed like this go round, it takes socially conscious technology themes and then just gets phantasmagorical with them. Plotwise I feel like Videodrome falls apart. Clever analogies that aside from the oddity never really made any sense to me outside of lampooning technology culture. Great effects and imagery, often just outside of making sense but stuff like that bolsters such an odd movie because I don't think making literal sense was ever the point. Format: Digital [Vudu HD]. Theme 1st Subset
02. The Lure (2015, 92 minutes) ★★★★★★★★✰✰ The Lure is a far out colorful pop odyssey with some great mermaid creature effects; I ended up enjoying that more than I thought. It's a bizzare and never too serious musical adaptation of the The Little Mermaid. Format: Digital [Vudu HD]. Theme 1st

October 1 [Cats & Dogs Theme Night] (10 hours, 52 minutes watched)
03. The Lifechanger (2018, 84 minutes) ★★★★★★½✰✰✰ Moody existential shape-shifter moping around about love is better than expected with a 'hero' whose is often someone else. The ending is a bit of a letdown. Format: Digital [Vudu HD]. 1st
04. Burning Bright (2010, 84 minutes) ★★★★★★✰✰✰✰ Execution that's tense with vivid sound design and an unusual premise that is painstakingly orchestrated to justify a tiger (named Lucifer) in someone's home with a cringeworthy developmental disability subplot and 'beat you over the head' style character development complete with a deadbeat stepdad with execution that somehow still works. Format: Digital [Vudu HD]. 1st Theme [Cat]
05. White God (2014, 122 minutes) ★★★★★★½✰✰✰ Like a boldly cinematographic cynical version of Homeward Bound that flirts with being too absurd to be serious but effectively dramatic and moody to lift past some flaws. Format: Digital [Vudu HD]. 1st Theme [Dog]
06. Sleepwalkers (1992, 91 minutes) ★★★✰✰✰✰✰✰✰ Relentlessly cheesy, I was never a big fan but wanted to revisit to see if my opinion has changed. It's got a nice 'rock music video' style and a potentially cool premise but seems so aimless. Format: Digital [Vudu HD]. Theme [Cat]
07. The Carrier (1988, 98 minutes) ★★★★★★½✰✰✰ A near hypnotic blend of bad movie, odd premise, cats, plastic wrap, and melting bodies that is as near impossible to not enjoy as it is to love. Format: Digital [Youtube]. Theme [Cat]
08. Cat People (1942, 72 minutes) ★★★★★★★✰✰✰ Cat people is different enough despite it's age to feel exotic. Nicely subtle building of character driven tension, the talky emphasis on evil with symbolism more than outright chills. It is a difficult balance because could be quite boring if the film didn't offer the tidbits it does along the way (some work better than others). Films like Cat People use irony much more to build tension than we see in more modern offerings. Format: Digital [Youtube, looking for a better digital copy and YT was not it]. Subset Theme [Cat]
09. Pet Sematary (2019, 101 minutes) ★★★★★★✰✰✰✰ Un-necessary remake with some slight changes that comes across well, what this remake does different especially works but elements rehashed from the original are often pale imitation - the neighbor, sister, and wife were better in the original. I think the creepy kid here was effective and the ending especially more horrific but less dramatic lacking some of the heart of the original. Format: Digital [Vudu 4K]. 1st Theme [Cat]

October 2 [Wedding Theme Night] (10 hours, 33 minutes watched)
10. Seventh Moon (2008, 87 minutes) ★★★★★½✰✰✰✰ Overly dark with a cool ethnic premise, there's not a lot of subtlety here basking in being a far out too dark to see chase epic. I can't decide if the film celebrates Cantonese culture or exploits it. Format: Digital [Vudu HD]. 1st Theme
11. Demon (2012, 95 minutes) ★★★★★★★✰✰✰ Atmospheric grandiose wedding ceremony punctuated by increasingly less subtle groom behavior with a menacing undertone that's cryptically taunt while maintaining an upbeat wedding party atmosphere 'marrying' awkward social etiquette with hints of supernatural leaving an ending that didn't immediately make sense to me with food for thought. Format: Digital [Vudu HD]. 1st Theme Subset
12. [Rec] 3 Genesis (2012, 85 minutes) ★★★★✰✰✰✰✰✰ The imagery of the chainsaw bride slaughtering zombies is great but too little of the film is that over the top enough for it to work as a whole. I’d be really curious about the decision to abandon the found footage style that gave [Rec] it’s name, which I think ultimately hurt part 3 (the characters are less serious and horror more remote) detouring a formerly epic franchise into overly familiar horror comedy staples more about sight gags than plot or frights. Format: Digital [Alyxstarr] Theme Subset
13. Who's Watching Oliver? (2017, 87 minutes) ★★★★★★★★✰✰. Dry execution of a cartoonish nerdy anti-hero plot sizzles as our lead goes on about mommy issues and gets hammy - but the direction is so straight it works impressively as if American Psycho lampooned nerdy 'Mamma's Boys' instead of Wallstreet with an compelling mix of overacting, gore, sleaze, and psychodrama that is enjoyable but inexplicable. A cartoonish parody that out-gores many slashers and is straight enough to be a knockout.Format: Digital [Vudu HD]. 1st
14. Lovely Molly (2011, 100 minutes) ★★★★★★★½✰✰ I cannot decide if Lovely Molly is a clever take on evil humans or sleazy and overly exploitative of cheap real life shocks - probably some of both. So far I think it's the most intelligent and thought provoking film I've seen getting pretty far out and leaving room for interpretations but also delivering on the visceral smut and gore. Format: Digital [Vudu HD]. Theme
15. The Midnight Swim (2014, 88 minutes) ★★★★½✰✰✰✰✰. First person point of view film of a mom who disappeared swimming in a lake too deep for anyone to reach the bottom. Sunny and often upbeat emphasizing drama between three sisters with subtle maybe supernatural elements that overall feels refreshingly unique and colorful but seeming to get a little metaphysical for my tastes but something I might appreciate more on another viewing. Format: Digital [Vudu HD]. 1st
16. Brightburn (2019, 91 minutes) ★★★★½✰✰✰✰✰ Clever concept but too tongue-in-cheek to the point it doesn't push the envelop much going nowhere, staying small scale, and reveling too much in teen angst. The Superman parody is fun but there's hardly any mystery or tension from the ultimately too derivative premise propped up only by being derivative which also kind of spoils any twists. Format: Digital [Vudu 4K]. 1st

October 3 [Playground Theme Night] (11 hours, 59 minutes watched)
17. Der Fan (1982, 92 minutes) ★★★★★★★✰✰✰ The Fan is a sleeping giant seeming mundane early on with a pedestrian teen fan plot and a gleefully mediocre but repetitive soundtrack then slow burning it's way to an increasingly more and more intense conclusion. The Fan ends up being one of the weighty films that I find myself having to take a break after. Format: Blu-ray [Mondo Macabro limited edition red case]. Subset Theme
18. Possum (2014, 88 minutes) ★★★★★✰✰✰✰✰ Creepy spider visuals strike across a bleak landscape as two characters, one angry and one whiny, bicker. It's arty but maybe not deep enough with too much repeated imagery carried by a plot structure of microscoping the whiny guy's grimacing pained looks and irony. There are hints of a larger plot and I can't decide if I like the subtle implication or plot or prefer something more transparent. Format: Digital [Vudu HD]. 1st Theme
19. The Ice Cream Truck (2017, 88 minutes) ★★★★½✰✰✰✰✰ Hypnotically dry suburban strife that gets side tracked with a housewife's mid life crisis and characters with motives that don't make sense. ICT remains compelling for longer than it should. The overall tone of the film is good but the ICT itself plays like an interlude in a different film, because I think it's meant to be symbolic or clever metaphor (showing up when there's romance) - the pastiche of different genres is impressively executed but in conflict with one another resulting in more discussion of the housewife smoking pot and eyeing the boy next door than bloodshed. Nice soundtrack. Format: Digital [Vudu HD]. 1st Theme
20. Tonight She Comes (2018, 85 minutes) ★★★★★★½✰✰✰ Odd humor and an elaborately awkward process in service of that humor nearly ruins what is far out enough to work despite some unintentionally (and some purposefully) cringe-worthy parts. Pacing is odd alternating between college humor to bloody ritual - it's the sort of film where to establish tension the characters yell profanity and over act then to compensate pushes the envelope to 11 and taking more chances pays off if you can stick with the lame first half. Format: Digital [Vudu HD]. 1st
21. Maggie (2015, 96 minutes) ★★★★½✰✰✰✰✰ Somber melodrama that tries to hard to pull at the heartstrings and wastes Schwartzenegger but while it works really really hard for it manages to score some ethos because it cheaply exploits my parental instincts. Format: Digital [Vudu HD]. 1st Theme
22. Critters (1986, 86 minutes) ★★★★½✰✰✰✰✰ Shamelessly over familiar cutesy creature film that is dumb but manages to ape 50s scifi basked 80s nostalgia enough to be a guilty pleasure. Format: Digital [Vudu HD].
23. Critters 2 (1988, 94 minutes) ★★★½✰✰✰✰✰✰ I remember liking 2 more years ago but this time it just seemed so much dumber with odd jokes about cheeseburgers and a forced attempt to tie in Easter. Format: Digital [Vudu HD].
24. Child's Play (2019, 90 minutes) ★★★★★✰✰✰✰✰ New Chucki seems devoid of personality taking a wtf horror concept and making it a more pedestarian technological thriller. There is a potentially smart idea of technological run amuck which oddly contrasts with Chucki's neediness of having a buddy - which is maybe intended to be ironic. The kills are a bit more mean spirited maybe in part because there's not a dynamic Charles Lee Ray style personality behind them so some of the humor and cheesiness is gone. Format: Digital [Vudu HD]. 1st

October 4 [Zombie Theme Night] (9 hours, 17 minutes watched)
25. Anna and the Apocalypse [USA Cut] (2017, 93 minutes) ★★★★★★★½✰✰ Absorbing musical with good energy that helped pep me up after feeling disillusioned by recent zombie comedy rip-offs. Aside from the low hanging fruit of mixing zombies and musicals Anna nicely balanced camp and sorrow. I especially liked the subdued ending paying off on earlier elements.Format: Digital [Vudu HD]. Theme 1st
26. Zombie (1979, 91 minutes) ★★★★★★½✰✰✰ A near classic with some great one liners. Zombi 2 does a decent job of nonsensically mixing spirituality and lore giving a better impression of scope across time and over the world. No matter how stupid it sounds when I think about it the shark vs zombie scene never gets old. Some of the gore here looks obviously fake - but still stomach turning because while it doesn't look like vomit or actual flesh it looks like they somehow found something more even vile to smear all over that woman. Format: Digital [Vudu HD]. Subset Theme
27. The Cured (2017, 95 minutes) ★★★★★★✰✰✰✰ Zombies are mostly cured but outcasted and some are immunity to the cure in a film filled with political intrigue about terrorism and social strife kind of like X-men with zombies instead of mutants thick with what must be analogies to strife in Ireland. Cinematographic and well executed enough to make the liberties with the zombie genre feel heartfelt and intriguing. Format: Digital [Vudu HD]. Theme 1st
28. The Girl With All the Gifts (2017, 95 minutes) ★★★★★★½✰✰✰ Smart script with a far out approach to zombie pseudo-science that's got heart and takes risks that pay off. Format: Digital [Vudu HD]. Theme 1st
29. The Dark (2018, 95 minutes) ★★★★✰✰✰✰✰✰ Awkward plot if taken literally about an abused ghoul who finds a kidnapped and blinded boy with some thematic bits about innocence and exploitation that necessitate some of the odd storyline. Seems to reach to have our anti-hero feel sympathetic and out victim aggressive.Format: Digital [Vudu HD]. Theme 1st
30. Black Site (2018, 88 minutes) ★★★✰✰✰✰✰✰✰ Sucker for Lovecraft horror I got shackled with this awkward attempt at bad actors 'possessed' by Elder Gods (which mostly means they rant about how cool they are). A third of the film is explaining rules of how Elder Gods get 'deported' to justify that there will be no Elder God eye candy here and nevermind the near climax 'talking to' the person pretending to be an Elder God gives our awkward military heroes. Format: Digital [Vudu HD]. Theme 1st

October 5 [Donald Pleasence 100th Birthday Theme Night] (9 hours, 39 minutes watched)
31. Prince of Darkness (1987, 112 minutes) ★★★★★★★½✰✰ I love the high concept physics approach to the 'anti-god partical' in a unique film on whatever it's about exatly - some cool ideas obscured enough to be abstract and disorienting. Many of the actors seem to have good chemistry and that helps sell the idea of graduate students holed up against ants and homeless people, or whatever else is haunting their dreams. Format: Digital [Vudu HD]. Theme
32. Phenomena [110 Minute Cut] (1985, 110 minutes) ★★★★★★★✰✰✰ Phenomena is so gleefully cartoonish and bizarre it's hard not to like. It holds up well on repeat viewings but drags a bit in the middle. Format: Blu-ray [Synapse Films steelbook]. Theme Subset
33. Doom (2005, 105 minutes) ★★★✰✰✰✰✰✰✰ Odd film that takes the skeleton of the legendary Doom video game series (shareware I grew up on) and reinterprets it into some thing involving a lot of people yelling in dark corridors. It's got a few clever "plot" twists but is not 'metal' enough to recapture even a fraction of the video game's hellacious pixelated gore oddly focusing more on first person room scans than memorable creatures or action. Format: Digital [Vudu HD].
34. Doom: Annihilation (2019, 96 minutes) ★★★★★½✰✰✰✰ More faithful to the game with a few references that made me chuckle and while not an objectively great movie is an ok throwback to the video game with faithful staging/creatures taking with some cheesy sci fi action segments that were popcorn fun. The female hero was a smart socially conscious inversion of the Sarge character. Format: Digital [Vudu HD].
35. Scooby Doo and the Goblin King! (2008, 75 minutes) ★★★★★★★½✰✰ Halloweenish parade of jackolanterns, headless horsement, fairies, goblins in one of the most entertaining Scooby Doos I've seen in a while. Format: Digital [Vudu HD].
36. Book of Monsters (2018, 81 minutes) ★★★★½✰✰✰✰✰ Rubber suits and fake chainsaws make for a kinetic upbeat movie with delightfully questionable practical effects that's cartoonish and enjoyable but not immersive which given not much plot may never have been the point - it's like the staged spectacle of wrestling but with girls fighting obviously fake monsters. Like Power Rangers for adults with bloodsplatter. Format: Digital [Vudu HD].

October 6 [Family Friendly Theme Night] (7 hours, 36 minutes watched)
37. Gremlins (1984, 106 minutes) ★★★★★★★★✰✰ This classic looked especially good in ultra high definition. Format: Digital [Vudu 4K]. Theme
38. Braid (2018, 84 minutes) ★★★★½✰✰✰✰✰ Coked out childhood friends hid from a bust at their oddly unstable friends who insists they continue to play a game where she's their mom in a relentlessly odd setup that detracts from the movie. There's some creative editing and sight effects if you can overcome the odd premise in a spectacle of style over substance for a twist that's more confusing that it's convincing. Format: Digital [Vudu HD]. 1st
39. Monster House (2006, 91 minutes) ★★★★★★✰✰✰✰ A family favorite. I cannot decide if the computer generated graphics are starting to look dated but there's a nice level of shading/detail that give it an almost clay appearance. I especially like the Halloween tone at first. I think it's interesting that instead of taking a phantasm approach the haunted house is literally and physically after then, which is a genre twist we don't see a lot. At first I though the monster concept was too bizarre. Format: Digital [Vudu HD]. Theme Subset
40. Night Creatures (1962, 82 minutes) ★★★★★★✰✰✰✰ Period trappings make for an interesting film that's more about pirates and smuggling than night creatures, who do have a cool design when they're about. Unexpected swashbuckling to save the day. Format: Digital [Vudu HD]. 1st Theme
41. Resolution (2012, 93 minutes) ★★★★★★½✰✰✰ Delightfully abstract film with totally out there twists and premise where there's no telling what will come next. It's never especially gorey and the plots got heart in spades. Seeing this a second time I'm still not entirely sure what's going on, which is all the more reason to see it a third time. Format: Digital [Vudu HD].

October 7 [Australia / New Zealand Theme Night] (9 hours, 15 minutes watched)
42. Boar (2017, 96 minutes) ★★★★★✰✰✰✰✰ I admired the sly comedy of Boar, from the title itself (perhaps a play on Bore) to the totally silly 'monster' with it's pig first person point of view. It's rare for horror comedies to be this deadpan and that works brilliantly staggering between semi-serious gorey carnage to playfully self aware humor that's never too out of the moment. Boar is a smart parody with competent staging and the outside scenes that feel cinematographic. I appreciated what mostly seemed to be practical effects (and the CGI they did need was questionable). Format: Digital [Shudder]. 1stTheme Subset
43. 100 Bloody Acres (2012, 91 minutes) ★★★★★★½✰✰✰ A gorey comedy of errors that turns bickering into a plot device but doesn't get too obnoxious until the end when the taut social tension erodes from characters mysteriously changing their motives. Nicely casual with some humor that works. Format: Digital [Vudu HD]. 1stTheme
44. Frankenstein (2004, 88 minutes) ★★★✰✰✰✰✰✰✰ A failed TV pilot based on Dean Koontz novels that quickly settles into a 'monster of the week' format and takes on the low hanging fruit of spirit vs science. There's a consistent sense of plot/dialog being seeding for another installment that never comes. Takes Frankenstein mythos and turns everything plural - more time, more experiments, etc losing some of the poetry in Frankenstein who becomes a supporting character for some obnoxious leads chasing disposable alternative monsters. Frankenstein is a rich and conflicted monster with a lot of potential and making him a sidekick is pretty far removed from the potential, shamelessly trading away the mythos without building on it. Format: Digital [Vudu SD]. 1st
45. I Survived a Zombie Holocaust (2014, 100 minutes) ★★★½✰✰✰✰✰✰ Questionable indie film with an obnoxious lead driving humor that only occasionally strikes offering little new to zombie horror comedy threads. There's a lengthy subplot about an outside bathroom that shows the worse of it's low brow humor but when it gets meta ISaZH is at it's best - amusing enough at times but overall average with a gimmick that's not fresh. Format: Digital [Vudu HD]. 1st Theme
46. Backcountry (2014, 92 minutes) ★★★★½✰✰✰✰✰ Scenic but painfully slow and while 'based on a true story' it seems implausible with not enough suspense until near the end, but gets points for emphasizing a romance drama plot over cheap jump scares or immediate gore. Format: Digital [Netflix]. 1st Theme
47. Red Clover (2012, 88 minutes) ★★½✰✰✰✰✰✰✰ Redundant Irish folklore thriller that's inferior to Warwick Davis in Leprechaun devoid of a dynamic Leprechaun personality (which is a hard feat because that's no classic). There's some potentially interesting psychodrama elements that are too quickly jettisoned for a lame quest to find the four lucky horseshoes missing because of fire and a generic creature that looks like a Halloween store prop come to life. Format: Digital [Vudu HD]. 1st Theme

October 8 [Slasher / Giallo / Killer Theme Night] (9 hours, 32 minutes watched)
48. Skinner (1993, 90 minutes) ★★★★½✰✰✰✰✰ Ted Rami hams it up with a sexually frustrated Rikki Lake across some dated thematic staging shots (think slow walking across concrete with graffiti) and not much plot. The 90s time capsule vibe rules but attempts at shock are too 'kind of like that other movie' and don't push the envelope enough feeling token rather than visceral or scary. Format: Digital [Vudu HD]. 1stTheme Subset
49. Disconnected (1984, 82 minutes) ★★★★✰✰✰✰✰✰ Disconnected was a very odd movie. The end seemed entirely random, I'm tempted to rewatch to see if I missed anything but don't hate myself that much. I usually admire slow burn psychological films but Disconnected seemed to get too 'experimental' for me really getting over indulgent with prolonged segments of people answering or not ringing telephones 20+ minutes after apparent resolution. I rated this a little higher are reading some thoughts about it being more psychological than I originally thought or having some supernatural subtext - I'm not sure if I agree but it gave me room to think. Format: Digital [Vudu HD]. 1stTheme Subset
50. Valentine (2001, 96 minutes) ★★★½✰✰✰✰✰✰ Rips off Carrie then draws it out in an awkward romance focused slasher where these women have to tolerate jerks while someone dressed as cupid picks people off because perhaps lonely. Shallow characters chasing a shallow premise with kills that are not inventive enough and a slasher who offers little new to the subgenre but rips off enough of it to be something I disliked rather than felt neutral about or enjoyed. Format: Digital [Vudu HD]. Theme
51. Don't Go in the House (1979, 89 minutes) ★★★★½✰✰✰✰✰ A poor man's 'Psycho' with a cult appeal I can understand given the lurid turn versus wooden anti-hero and an unusual kill mechanism, stir in religious fever and childhood trauma for an overbaked plot about nothing. Format: Digital [Vudu HD]. 1st Theme
52. Psycho (1960, 109 minutes) ★★★★★★★✰✰✰ Competently staged Psycho is one of those films that is brilliant but over the years I'd argue has lost some of it's novelty and impact - it's legacy overshadows the film. I know it's a great film but don't think I've ever experienced it's impact as strongly as it must have been in the 1960s. Format: Digital [Vudu HD]. Theme
53. Summer of '84 (2018, 106 minutes) ★★★★★★★½✰✰ Lives up to the hype with dirty minded kids yucking up together and sleuthing around a serial killer delivering an especially memorable ending with some great twists along the way. Format: Digital [Vudu HD]. 1st Theme

October 9 [Stranded Theme Night] (8 hours, 0 minutes watched)
54. Dead End (2003, 85 minutes) ★★★★★★★✰✰✰ Dead End is a great premise hamstrung by odd humor and tone that is both it's greatest strength and biggest weakness. None of it makes any sense, from the entire family talking about how unfaithful both spouses are to the circle they're driving in. The characters are so inconsistent and unlikeable it's off putting at first but then ends up coming together in a cartoonish but still spooky way, some so over the top and it could not have worked in a more serious film. A black comedy first and a horror film second. Format: Digital [Vudu HD]. Theme Subset
55. Penny Dreadful (2006, 96 minutes) ★★★★½✰✰✰✰✰ Disposable thriller with an overly power and cryptic villain that hints at psychological explanation but maintains a cryptic air for much of it's stay. Competently staged but didn't sit with me because the unreliable hero stranded in a car felt too staged staggering between psychological red herrings and a villain that is rarely compelling beyond these altered perception gimmicks. Format: Digital [Vudu HD]. 1st Theme
56. Open Windows (2014, 101 minutes) ★★★★★½✰✰✰✰ Techno-thriller didn't feel much like horror, but IMDB says it is. Flirts with being too scifi parading technology that's too ever powerful omniscent but with enough twists to make it interesting and I'm a sucker for these 'all on the computer' style films. Format: Digital [Vudu HD]. 1st
57. Soul to Keep (2018, 94 minutes) ★★★✰✰✰✰✰✰✰ Derative but serviceable demon movie. There's a gnarly demon worm and some themes about friendship that peak out from a tapestry of odd fully clothed sex scenes and questionable acting patchworking Evil Dead, The Thing, and other elements from better filmsFormat: Digital [Netflix]. 1st
58. The Manitou (1978, 104 minutes) ★★★★★★✰✰✰✰ Unusual concept as hammy as it is psychedelic that's hard to enjoy but impossible not to like. Format: Digital [Vudu HD]. 1st

October 10 [Movies Show in Movies Theme Night] (13 hours, 6 minutes watched)
59. Innocent Blood (1992, 113 minutes) ★★★★½✰✰✰✰✰ Competent actors chew up a lukewarm screenplay with 'comedy' that is distracting, like the obnoxiously Italian gang members and their strange rants about robbing toasters or garlic in italian food being a literal plot point. Innocent Blood has a nice early 90s vibe that somehow works despite itself thanks in part to Anne Parillaud and what I think is some keen direction from John Landis who should have found a better writer. Format: Digital [Vudu HD]. Theme
60. The Faculty (1998, 104 minutes) ★★★★★★½✰✰✰ Some of the humor is great and twists feel unpredictable. The soundtrack is nicely ironic and suited for the film, mostly featuring 90s popular rock bands covering older era popular rock songs. The Faculty was the film that we needed in 1998, when horror was starting to get questionable in the years that immediate followed Scream. I think The Faculty's biggest problem is that as an analogy it's too thin and the drug subplot is a real oddity. Format: Digital [Vudu HD]. Theme Subset
61. Thankskilling (2008, 70 minutes) ★★★★✰✰✰✰✰✰ Nonsensical amateurish horror comedy with a relentlessly silly Indian turkey muppet that's more fun than it should be but never reaches the heights of humor or gore to stick the premise - but it's the kind of film that doesn't expect you to think it's good and shows some promise.. Format: Digital [Vudu HD]. 1st Theme
62. Vamps (2012, 93 minutes) ★★★★✰✰✰✰✰✰ Campy silly comedy about ditsy vampires in the city trying to abstain from human blood and pal-ing around with romantic comedy overtones and a very casual feel - it's hardly horror but it was a nice break from some of the doom with other films. There's a lot of recognizable faces mostly wasted in small roles - Sigourney Weaver, Alicia Silverstone, Wallace Shawn, Malcolm Mcdowell, etc glitzing up typical vampire movie tropes. Format: Digital [Vudu HD]. 1st Theme
63. Thankskilling 3 (2012, 100 minutes) ★★★★★✰✰✰✰✰ Relentlessly weird with an aimless parade of creative skits, gags, muppets, and all manner of flippiant nonsense. Much of it is incredibly dumb material often presented in a smart way - the sort of film that shows genius but is still unlikeable despite the inventiveness with much of it, like when the killer turkey and a geriatric turkey enter a 8 bit era video game for no obvious reason. Much of the film seems to take place in a living room arguing about a theme park called Thanksgiving land with robot turkeys, rapping grannies, a sexually ambigious worm, and now my brain just hurts. Format: Digital [Vudu HD]. 1st
64. Ma (2019, 109 minutes) ★★★★★✰✰✰✰✰ Middle age woman parties with the kids in an atypical twist to horror villains that is delightfully different but doesn't quite work as it's flashbacks and flimsy justification develops in the most predictable way. Pulp fluff. Format: Digital [Vudu HD]. 1st Theme
65. Rust Creek (2018, 108 minutes) ★★★★★★✰✰✰✰ Scenic slow burn about a stranded girl and a meth lab. Format: Digital [Vudu HD]. 1st
66. Double Date (2017, 89 minutes) ★★★★★★½✰✰✰ Epic cold open that stalls out to the extended awkwardness of a prolonged date scene with a clumbsy oaf too intentionally odd to be taken seriously flops around trying to lose his virginity now that he's 30. Entertaining enough despite some pacing problems but a bit over long for the content but with some style. Format: Digital [Vudu HD]. 1st

October 11 [Club Theme Night] (8 hours, 58 minutes watched)
67. Goddess of Love (2015, 93 minutes) ★★★★★½✰✰✰✰ Moody jazzy slow burn with an angsty woman agonizing over a lover in increasingly isolating ways with hints of late night Cinemax. Maybe her work as a dancer is thematic to idealize her as a object of passion too remote to know and love beyond appearances creating the conflict of isolation and vague romantic conflict central to the plot - or maybe it's just low brow sleaze. This is the sort of slow cryptic film I might usually enjoy more but am not sure I was in the mood for it or if it just didn't grab me.Format: Digital [Vudu HD]. 1st Theme
68. The Hills Run Red (2009, 81 minutes) ★★★★★★½✰✰✰ Hills Run Red not only parodies the genre, it also delivers on gore and twists worth following beyond the satire. The premise captures the over the top legacy of video nasties that sound even more amazing by reputation than they ever where in real life. Format: Digital [Vudu HD]. 1st
Theme
69. The First Purge (2018, 112 minutes) ★★★½✰✰✰✰✰✰ Lacking the suspense of Purge 1 or the eye candy style of Purge 2 (Purge 3-4 I cannot clearly remember because they're all so similar) it stokes the most obvious threads of social angst in ways that seem so 'on the nose' it's near mean spirited over exaggeration of political violence in the news today rehashing rather than elevating or reinterpreting the most direct commentary. One could watch videos of actual police brutality or mass shootings and probably experience the themes more directly rather then seeing them staged here. Generic masked villain after another versus a modern day Rambo hero who inexplicably snaps peoples necks and takes out groups of armed goon squads with ease as machine guns miss their mark until the plot needs a device. The camera is always tilted to an angle with cinematography that seems disjointed and over edited flipping from face to face in strobe light kung fu. Format: Digital [Vudu HD]. 1st
70. Nightmare Before Christmas (1993, 76 minutes) ★★★★★★✰✰✰✰ Relentlessly creative oddity that is not as entertaining as it should be because each character seems overly detailed and caught up in their eccentricities. Format: Digital [Vudu HD]. 1st
71. Critters Attack! (2019, 89 minutes) ★★★★½✰✰✰✰ Great cheesy practical effects with a lukewarm disposable plot. The Critters films have never been especially strong but this one was a disposable popcorn creature feature - not good but not bad, not scary and not funny but a strange mindless babysitting and aliens adventure. Format: Digital [Vudu 4K]. 1st
72. Sinister Circle (2016, 87 minutes) ★★★½✰✰✰✰✰✰ Very focused on lengthy discussion of the mental health with patients at an asylum from a psychologist whose mother is a patient, off screen musing of people 'having another episode' punctuated by appearances of a generic phantom girl and elements from The Omen. Format: Digital [Netflix]. 1st

October 12 ['Guitar Barbarians, Mutant Bimbos & Cult Zombies Run Amok In' Theme Night] (13 hours, 17 minutes watched)
73. Tales From the Crypt: Bordello of Blood (1996, 87 minutes) ★★★½✰✰✰✰✰✰ Cringeworthy one liners and cheesey overacting that was a lot cooler when I was 15 with a lurid premise that's not funny nor scary enough. Format: Digital [Vudu HD]. Theme
74. 976-EVIL (1988, 93 minutes) ★★✰✰✰✰✰✰✰✰ Relentlessly bad and not in the right state of mind to enjoy it for any 'so bad it's good' potential. All the players are shallow caricatures, it's got pacing issues, and the effects are never great. Very little happens until much later in the film, there isn't much of a conflict for too long other than an obnoxiously over religious 'mom' and general bullying with none of the subtlety or humor to carry the 'slice of life' elements. Format: Digital [Vudu HD]. Theme Subset
75. 976-EVIL II (1991, 87 minutes) ★★★★✰✰✰✰✰✰ Cheesier with a more clear bad guy and much much better pacing featuring more of a character from this first film. Also delivering on motorcycle road stunts. Neither are great films or ones I'd especially recommend. Format: Digital [Amazon Prime]. 1st
76. Vamp (1986, 93 minutes) ★★★★★★½✰✰✰ Overlooked 80s gem with a smart script, fun buddy comedy elements, and memorable vampire effects. Format: Digital [Vudu HD]. Theme
77. 47 Meters Down (2017, 89 minutes) ★★★★½✰✰✰✰✰ I'm a glutton for underwater films and the sound design carries this film a long way, I like some of the vague elements that come up but the actresses aren't grate and pacing sometimes too slow it dulls the tension with CGI sharks not helping much either. Format: Digital [Vudu HD].
78. The Bye Bye Man (2017, 96 minutes) ★★★★✰✰✰✰✰✰ B-grade villain gets to be in a movie because maybe, thankfully, they couldn't get the rights to Candyman. There are some threads of interest, even if they're not especially original but the Bye Bye Man is the worse element of his own film. Format: Digital [Vudu HD]. 1st
79. Hotel Transylvania (2012, 91 minutes) ★★★★★★✰✰✰✰ An upbeat busy party movie with a lot of sight gags that I enjoy revisiting with the kids. Format: Digital [Vudu 4K].
80. The Old Dark House (1932, 72 minutes) ★★★★★★✰✰✰✰ Suspenseful slow burn with rich atmosphere and a buildup that's better than the payoff and some witty banter. Format: Digital [Vudu HD]. 1st Theme
81. Blair Witch (2016, 89 minutes) ★★★★✰✰✰✰✰✰ Effectively scary rich with atmosphere but at the same time featuring some ridiculous looking effects with twists and requiring keen attention to quick shaky camera sweeps of very generic environments (both frustrating but also leaving the impression there's something just out of view or maybe overlooked). Nicely referencing Blair Witch mythos but adding little new to it. Despite obvious mediocre elements it scared me more than most.Format: Digital [Vudu 4K]. 1st

October 13 [Werewolf Theme Night] (10 hours, 40 minutes watched)
82. Romasanta: The Werewolf Hunter (2004, 90 minutes) ★★★★★★½✰✰✰ Scenic period horror with grisly murders that approaches them with a clinical interest and gravitas. Moody and different but with some plot structure that's odd - like retelling a story with clips rather than experiencing the events. Format: Digital [Vudu HD]. Theme 1st
83. Wer (2013, 89 minutes) ★★★★★★★✰✰✰ The forensic docudrama feel of Wer is great and it takes a gutsy approach to structure, not depending on subtlety to tell a story that's more 'in your face' than usual. From newclips to set the stage to a forensic rationale for investigation it mostly works brilliantly but sometimes the attorney's 'all people deserve to be heard' over involvement seems odd. Some distracting CGI blood lends itself to the unreal feel of the story and there's a rich implied backstory. Format: Digital [Vudu HD]. Theme Subset
84. Little Monsters (2019, 93 minutes) ★★★★★★✰✰✰✰ Sweet zombie comedy that doesn't add much new to the zombie comedy formula but the cliche loser's search for redemption is competently acted well enough to elevate it beyond the norm and a room full of kids provides ready levity. Format: Digital [Hulu]. 1st
85. The Addams Family (2019, 87 minutes) ★★★★✰✰✰✰✰✰ Takes the same 'everyone is an outsider so let's celebrate imperfections' theme of The Lego Movie, Ugly Dolls Movie, and countless others inserting Addams Family. It's a persistently feel good theme but also a little too 'Mr Rogers Neighborhood' and overly general. The Addams Family never gets better than cute and some of it's sibling revival outsiders fitting in cgi family comedies do a much more creative job with the same premise. Format: Theatrical. 1st
86. Mon Mon Mon Monsters (2017, 113 minutes) ★★★★★★★½✰✰ Mean spirited high school kids find and capture one monster but still have to put up with each other in a better than I expected supernatural gang war with high schoolers and vampires. Gore, comedy, and awkward social situations abound. Format: Digital [Shudder]. 1st
87. The Creeping Flesh (1973, 92 minutes) ★★★★✰✰✰✰✰✰ Gnarly skeletons for Peter Cushing to peer at and act preoccupied with until there's a disappointing ending and a really cool premise that feels half baked. Format: Digital [Vudu HD]. 1st
88. The Corpse of Anna Fritz (2015, 76 minutes) ★★★★★★½✰✰✰ Deranged thriller taking place in a morgue that was tense and sick but not as creepy as I had hoped for [this is no Autopsy of Jane Doe]. Format: Digital [Shudder]. 1st

October 14 [1994/1969/1944 Anniversary Theme Night] (14 hours, 33 minutes watched)
89. Escape Room (2019, 99 minutes) ★★★★½✰✰✰✰✰ Good enough to exceed my low expectations. The odd Escape Room premise has neat enough wraparound story but I wasn't as into the actual escape gimmicks which seemed too odd despite the associated backstory. I was a safe enough film to watch with my oldest daughter and not have to worry about nightmares. Format: Digital [Vudu HD]. 1st
90. Wes Craven's New Nightmare (1994, 112 minutes) ★★★★★½✰✰✰✰ Clever premise of a film within a film that's a sequel to the other films yet also a Hansel and Gretel homage involving a lot of behind the screen talent trying their best to act in front of the camera. The smart concept seems under utilized because for a movie about making a movie there's a whole lot of Heather standing around in her kitchen, people driving alone on the road at night, or walking down hallways. This is the best Freddy sequel in some time, but that's not saying much. The darker more improved Freddy is starting to look rubbery. Format: Digital [Vudu HD]. Theme Subset
91. Knife + Heart (2018, 112 minutes) ★★★★★★★½✰✰ Giallo with style framed around gay porn capitalizing on it for humor and a lot of the pathos culminating in a slow burn. Format: Digital [Shudder]. 1st
92. It Came From the Desert (2017, 90 minutes) ★★★★★½✰✰✰✰ CGI Ants versus Motorbikes has got good pacing that carries it with better than average CGI. It's a fluffy and casual film that's easy to enjoy though never gets great - a party movie with a cast of three that's still a party but leaving you feeling like something is missing. Format: Digital [Shudder]. 1st
93. Itsy Bitsy (2019, 94 minutes) ★★★½✰✰✰✰✰✰ Awkward backstory about tribal double cross and also a car accident and a family movie but there's a creepy neighbor who is grieving his wife and then... it's all to justify a cool looking spider creature. Now an old guy is explaining to us what a legend is. So much gabbing on to justify how cool this spider must be and a little bit of weighty family drama that they work so hard for. Format: Digital [Vudu HD]. 1st
94. The Cloverhitch Killer (2018, 109 minutes) ★★★★★★½✰✰✰ Smart script with tight pacing and good diverging stories about a killer that seems near average compared to most horror movies which is a great strength here slying emphasizing suburban elements. Format: Digital [Vudu HD]. 1st
95. The Mummy's Curse (1944, 60 minutes) ★★★★✰✰✰✰✰✰ The image of a mummy in the swamp is a great one but it doesn't break much new ground and seems to intentionally emphasize that the plot is similar to a previous film (?). I didn't understand how the mummy got to the swamp (other than maybe a prior film) and while consistency is important this seemed to over obsess over the mummy seeking his love yet again. Format: Digital [Alyxstarr]. 1st Theme Subset
96. The Curse of La Llorna (2019, 93 minutes) ★★★★½✰✰✰✰✰ La Llorna is a very unique premise and they've twisted it into a much more routine haunted house film complete with an exorcist, jump scares, and odd rituals. It's atmospheric enough but ultimately seems like wasted potential. Format: Digital [Vudu 4K]. 1st
97. The House That Screamed [Extended Cut](1969, 104 minutes) ★★★★★★★✰✰✰ Theatrical with a sense of gravitas across a scenic boarding house, they could pan over the boarding house for half the film and it'd still be interesting. The kills here are shocking especially the first one seeming to come out of nowhere, probably the most starling kill I've seen this month. I did not predict the killer. What a cheesy title for a better than average film that has probably hurt it over the years. Format: Digital [Alyxstarr]. 1st Theme Subset

October 15 [Film Crew Theme Night] (8 hours, 0 minutes watched)
98. One Cut of the Dead (2017, 96 minutes) ★★★★★★★½✰✰ Something different masquerading as something overly familiar with a clever premise and some sly humor. I think the 100% Rotten Tomato rating and hype might be overboard but I enjoyed it a lot. Format: Digital [Shudder]. 1st Theme Subset
99. Effects (1979, 84 minutes) ★★★★★★★½✰✰ Film about a film where the cast sits around drinking, snorting cocaine, and wondering if violence they see on camera is real. It's got a natural style to it that works well and feels, maybe at times too much, like a hangout film until the slow burn pays off. Format: Digital [Vudu HD]. 1st Theme
100. Shadow of the Vampire (2000, 92 minutes) ★★★★★★★½✰✰ Excellent meta film that might just make the classic Nosferatu even better seeing it with epic acting and set design fittingly keeping tension high as we watch a film of them making a film that's nearly a vampire hostage situation. Format: Digital [Vudu HD]. 1st Theme
101. P (2005, 110 minutes) ★★½✰✰✰✰✰✰✰ Mean spirited and pretentious, the sort of film about a strip club that features no nudity with characters that are different shades of unlikeable and a the most fake looking photorealistic creature they somehow managed to CGI onto the actor; the mystical elements are appreciated but ultimately wasted. Format: Digital [Vudu HD]. 1st Theme
102. What Keeps You Alive (2018, 98 minutes) ★★★★★★½✰✰✰ Scenic but initially predictable, it's not as tense as the plot sets up to be but is artfully made in a scenario where the backstory makes the film much better as it's slowly revealed and woven into the present. Format: Digital [Vudu HD]. 1st Theme

October 16 [Pranks Theme Night] (10 hours, 1 minutes watched)
103. Final Exam (1981, 89 minutes) ★★★★★★✰✰✰✰ Slyly defies standard slasher conventions in smart ways but also is enslaved to familiar tropes that prevent it from breaking out too much - it's a better than average memorable slasher but not one of the best with kills that are, perhaps intentionally, subdued as they get so it's not as sleazy or gorey and a cast that's as generic. Pacing is better than average with a memorable out of nowhere prank scene that has little to do with the plot. Format: Digital [Prime]. Theme Subset
104. Pledge (2018, 77 minutes) ★★★★½✰✰✰✰✰ Torture porn college style makes some gutsy twists but is not extreme enough for torture alone and over indulges in the low hanging fruit of torment rather than mining any social commentary rich themes. The kind of film that's predictable in trying to do more torture as it goes along tinged with slightly promises of hope on repeat. Format: Digital [Vudu HD]. 1st
105. Better Watch Out (2016, 89 minutes) ★★★½✰✰✰✰✰✰ Revisiting BW because I didn't like it before & people say it's good. BWO starts out suspenseful but goes from balancing suspense and uncertainty to jumping the shark with increasingly unconvincing characterization to the point of near comedy, which conflicts with the grim proceedings. This may be the ironic design of BWO but from wonderfully contrasting extremes it veers too much towards being mean spirited schlock reducing any sympathetic characters to duct tape set dressing. Format: Digital [Vudu HD]. Theme
106. Child's Play (1988, 87 minutes) ★★★★★★½✰✰✰ Brilliant idea well paced with an implied metaphor about consumerism and an out there premise that Mancini pulls off convincingly. Cool effects and deftly balances action with oddity creating something strangely good but also 'so bad it's good' cheesiness that works directly and on an ironic level. Format: Digital [Vudu HD]. Theme
107. Happy Death Day (2017, 96 minutes) ★★★★★½✰✰✰✰ Vibrant upbeat comedy with a horrible ending that diminishes much of the earlier buildup and is not clever enough; kind of like the writer is just messing with you. Some of the 'live every day like it's your last' punchlines work well and the leads have good chemistry. It's a feel good horror movie. Format: Digital [Vudu 4K].
108. The Purge (2013, 85 minutes) ★★★★★✰✰✰✰✰ Somehow managed to save a horrible premise with some interesting twists and generally good acting. The lead villain is so obnoxious it launches you out of the movie; like a bad Shakesphere actor - I think that's suppose to make him menacing or sound educated but it's cringeworthy. Eventually descends into people jumping around dark corridors getting less memorable as it goes along and the masks make many of the characters look like the disposable cannon fodder that they are. Format: Digital [Vudu 4K].
109. The Interior (2015, 78 minutes) ★★★★★½✰✰✰✰ Workplace comedy spins into a strange outdoors slow burn; the first part is so filled with office grief it practically rolls it's eyes at you then suddenly there's a title card and shift to some odd outdoors atmosphere that's both off putting and weird enough to be funny. Format: Digital [Vudu HD].

October 17 [Fog Theme Night] (10 hours, 30 minutes watched)
110. Mandy (2018, 121 minutes) ★★★★★★✰✰✰✰ Psychedelic to a fault this trippy oddity is sometimes too slow and stylized for my taste artfully drawing out proceedings as a clever homage to doom metal with a spaghetti western style that makes no sense and is delightfully pretentious. Well crafted but overly long film about nothing pulling in design features so over the top they look great as neon snapshots so long as you don't assemble them into anything that tries to be cohesive, popcorn mysticism. Format: Digital [Vudu HD]. 1st Theme
111. The Fury (1978, 118 minutes) ★★★★★✰✰✰✰✰ Slow spy odyssey with psychic romance and government conspiracy held together by world class actors, the sort of film that could not be made today with this sort of deadpan seriousness. It's overly long but what an ending. Format: Digital [Vudu HD]. Theme Subset
112. Wildling (2018, 92 minutes) ★★★★★★½✰✰✰ From the engagingly cryptic introduction to it's more average middle Wilding flirts with overly familiar plot elements but ends up working despite those with a fantastic finale and some neat creature effects. Seems to get weaker as it goes along and doesn't try to avoid being predictable. Format: Digital [Vudu HD]. 1st Theme
113. Dead Tone (2007, 100 minutes) ★★★★★✰✰✰✰✰ The sort of mindless slasher antics I was in the mood for, there's some filler and it's an amalgam of mainstream films but serviceable and probably better than a lot of post-Scream 2000s era teen oriented slasher revival films were. Format: Digital [Vudu HD]. 1st
114. Silent Hill (2006, 125 minutes) ★★★★★½✰✰✰✰ An abstract premise that's one of the better video game adaptations with well choreographed fiends that stumble through narrow hallways or fog clouded streets. Some of the CGI is starting to look dated distracting from at least one gorey kill. Format: Digital [Vudu HD]. Theme
115. The Honor Farm (2017, 74 minutes) ★★★★✰✰✰✰✰✰ Ecclectic hangout movie that's less surreal or frightening than I had hoped with a casual vibe tinted with strangeness rather than whole heartedly committing to much of any plot or frights. Format: Digital [Vudu HD]. 1st

October 18 [Larry Cohen Theme Night] (10 hours, 38 minutes watched)
116. God Told Me To (1976, 91 minutes) ★★★★★★★✰✰✰ Inventive blasphemy with startling enigmatic kills and a plot that could only have come from the 70s far out enough there's no way of know what comes next. With biblical allusions like this I'm surprised God Told Me To wasn't burned; Gold Told Me To is the kind of blasphemy mild in sex/gore but that my parents would have disowned me for watching. Format: Digital [Shudder]. Theme
117. Special Effects (1984, 106 minutes) ★★★★★★½✰✰✰ A not bad thriller most interesting for it's sizzling irony with meta elements taking on identity and the art of film, observation versus experience. Sometimes too obvious with machinations but still fun. Format: Digital [Vudu HD]. 1st Theme
118. The Stuff (1985, 87 minutes) ★★★½✰ Social commentary rich parody of commercialism and diet that stretches a thin concept as far as it can with bold characters but perhaps too little plot beyond the clever concept. Format: Digital [Vudu HD]. Theme
119. Bethany (2017, 90 minutes) ★★★★★★✰✰✰✰ Expecting bottom bin zoned out viewing here but it was much better than I expected with psychological tension and a just confusing enough story that slowly unpacks across it's zoomed in frequent cut camera angels and blue tinted night scenes - the staging isn't very cinematic but it was compelling indie horror despite some questionable effects and iffy plot twists. Format: Digital [Vudu HD].
120. Voices (2007, 85 minutes) ★★★★★✰✰✰✰✰ Eventually a cool premise that's too intentionally cryptic for some of it's run time and doesn't stand out as original enough - it's gorey but the characters aren't dynamic enough getting lost in all the twists and 'shocks.' Format: Digital [Vudu HD].
121. Desolation (2017, 76 minutes) ★★½✰✰✰✰✰✰✰ My wife joked about how the killer looks like they just staged a camera man in front of the lens. The characters are given a tragic backstory to compel sympathy compensating for them going around acting unlike real people. I kept expecting more of a payoff that never comes. Format: Digital [Vudu HD].
122. The Purge: Anarchy (2014, 103 minutes) ★★★★½✰✰✰✰ Better staging with a cityscape where social issues pound you over the head and the introduction of elements that get so recycled through the other Purge films they feel stale on repeat viewing. Format: Digital [Vudu 4K].

October 19 [Video Store Theme Night] (10 hours, 25 minutes watched)
123. Kiss of the Damned (2012, 97 minutes) ★★★★½✰✰✰✰✰ Shows promise once you get past the least convincing romance and some pretentious dialog with attempts at sensuality that are appreciated. It's grandiose and the romance flavor helps with some depth but sometimes aimlessness with one sister complaining about the other - the talking heads that suck the life out of you dwelling on the fallout of action that's less frequent.Format: Digital [Vudu HD]. 1st Viewing Theme
124. Willow Creek (2017, 80 minutes) ★★★★½✰✰✰✰✰ Documentary style with a parade of interviews that play like subtle semi-serious sketch comedy, a hillbilly who breaks into song about bigfoot or a gas station attendant peddling bigfoot memorabilia. Nothing especially funny but staged enough to be distracting until it eventually evens out to straddle the line between out there and 'frightening' with found footage staples. Format: Digital [Vudu HD]. 1st Viewing
125. The Prey (1983, 80 minutes) ½✰✰✰✰✰✰✰✰✰ I am a victim of The Prey, forced to watch overly long campouts and images of ants or moths. I'm so glad I didn't attempt the 103 minute composite cut. Format: Digital [Alyxstarr]. 1st Viewing Theme Subset
126. Highway to Hell (1991, 94 minutes) ★★★★★★✰✰✰✰ Fast paced oddball Hell comedy that doesn't take itself to seriously and is fantastic enough to work well, Hell Cop for president. Format: Digital [Vudu HD]. Theme
127. The Addams Family (1991, 99 minutes) ★★★★★★½✰✰✰ Brilliant sight gags nail the tone of Addams Family and some of the Fester oriented plot is odd attempting to shoehorn a heist mystery thriller into the cartoonish gothicness it still works atmospherically. Format: Digital [Vudu HD].
128. Scooby Doo and the Gourmet Ghost (2018, 77 minutes) ★★★★✰✰✰✰✰✰ Odd team up with Food Network personalities who are too boring for the screen time they're given with a surprisingly elaborate fake Bobby Flay backstory. Format: Digital [Vudu HD].
129. Greta (2018, 98 minutes) ★★★★★✰✰✰✰✰ Unconvincingly random January December friendship goes to unconvincing extremes that are sometimes intense and interesting but hard to suspend disbelief. Stylishly made with a more interesting open middle before it's jump the shark premise gets too married to tropes. Format: Digital [Vudu 4K].

October 20 [Vampire Theme Night] (12 hours, 47 minutes watched)
130. Vidar the Vampire (2017, 83 minutes) ★★★★★★✰✰✰✰ Raunchy but not juvenile with some explicit humor that is played straight and works well. Frank about sexuality and blasphemy using some gross out humor in provocative ways resulting in situations not always as funny as they are queasy. Making an ironic fool of the Vidar character like the loser hero of sex starved vampires or playing on his religious origins with evil Jesus frenemy buddy comedy elements. There are some oddly paced flashback scenes to Vidar's childhood years that seem to comment on innocence versus adulthood but contrast with some of the tone. Format: Digital [Vudu HD]. 1st Viewing Theme
131. Eat Locals (1967, 77 minutes) ★★★★½✰✰✰✰✰ I expected to hate but ultimately better than serviceable with an interesting structure where the vampires are under siege combining indie grade action and enough characters that even the weak ones don't bottleneck the films better elements. A brazen approach to vampires (with CGI fire machine guns) where the vampires are not the aggressors and cool siege elements tainted by an odd sense of humor that requires an appreciation for indie grade action. Format: Digital [Vudu HD]. 1st Viewing Theme
132. Viy (1967, 77 minutes) ★★★★★★★½✰✰ Brilliantly strange blend of paranoia and irony forcing a seminary student through night after night of increasingly strange torment and the ending is really visually great. It's engaging but vague enough to leave one wondering what exactly you just saw, surreal enough to not be clear what is real.Format: Digital [Vudu HD]. 1st Viewing Theme Subset
133. The Reflecting Skin (1990, 96 minutes) ★★★★★★✰✰✰✰ Rural thriller oozing with rustic charm across sunlight wheat fields populated by eccentric characters who radiate magical realism. A few intentionally odd quirks that detract from the film making it feel less smooth than it could but maybe necessary for the fake real charm of Reflecting Skin. Great tone. Format: Digital [Vudu HD]. 1st Viewing Theme
134. Count Dracula (1970, 98 minutes) ★★★★✰✰✰✰✰✰ Eurohorror Dracula that didn't impressed me as much; seems like Kinski needs someone to hold a gun for him to act and I've never been an especially big fan of the Dracula story with little new coming out of this. I think I prefer sleazy Franco, who shows up in the film. Format: Digital [Vudu HD]. 1st Viewing Theme
135. Dracula (1931, 75 minutes) ★★★★★★★✰✰✰ It's age makes for a stronger film with a sense of formality and big staging for the now overly familiar plot that doesn't outstays itself here. A lot of the actors are impassioned and not just Lugosi. I think the plot is xenophobia and has not held up over the decades and imitators. Format: Digital [Vudu HD]. Theme
136. Happy Death Day 2U (2019, 100 minutes) ★★★★★✰✰✰✰✰ Clever addition to the original film that makes revisiting the same day yet again seem much less painful that it sounds. Blend in some scifi and time travel theory with less serial killing for a comedy with heart and dimension hopping. Format: Digital [Vudu HD]. 1st Viewing
137. Nails (2017, 85 minutes) ★★★✰✰✰✰✰✰✰ Occasionally scary but the sort of film the relishes in explaining a bad guy who is hardly a bad guy at all being so generic with CGI glee. Staging a horror movie around an invalid woman is not a very engaging premise it comes out like Rear Window where she's spying on the other side of her bedroom. Format: Digital [Vudu HD]. 1st Viewing
138. The Devil's Doorway (2018, 76 minutes) ★★★★½✰✰✰✰✰ Found footage so real that there are frequent blemishes on screen and a cute box around the proceedings. It has a nicely historical feel with period trappings and sets itself slightly better than typical found footage or possession films with a bizarre cryptic ending. Format: Digital [Vudu HD]. 1st Viewing

October 21 [John Carl Buechler Theme Night] (10 hours, 35 minutes watched)
139. Viscious Lips (1986, 84 minutes) ★★★✰✰✰✰✰✰✰ Relentlessly campy movie about nothing that's scifi filler and music with 80s fashion. Format: Digital [Vudu HD]. 1st Viewing Theme
140. A Nightmare on Elm Street 4: The Dream Master (1988, 93 minutes) ★★★★★½✰✰✰✰ Dream Master is slickly produced and well staged but without some of the teasing buildup that make horror movie greats. I usually love continuous sequels like Dream Master and was glad to see them step away from the failings of part 3. Robert Englund doesn’t get as much screen time here as needed dulling some of the kills. Parts feel like an ‘insert random dream scene and repeat’ mode rather than feeling like there’s a presence. Format: Digital [Vudu HD]. Theme Subset
141. Yoga Hosers (2016, 88 minutes) ★★★★★✰✰✰✰✰ Aimless and obnoxious, the sort of carefree film engineered to be cult oddity we don't see a lot of these days filled with jokes about Canada and cell phones that aren't as funny as they are cartoonish. Overall I liked it's silly tone but it's more a series of in-jokes than a film. Format: Digital [Vudu HD]. 1st
142. Hyenas (2011, 92 minutes) ★★½✰✰✰✰✰✰✰ Painful film with a sometimes naked were-hyena cult being chased by b-grade action movie reject hunters. Buechler is credited with effects, but they're a little CGI heavy. One hyena announces she's near immediately pregnant because she has hyena senses... Format: Digital [Vudu HD]. Theme
143. Mausoleum (1983, 96 minutes) ★★★★★✰✰✰✰✰ I enjoyed Mausoleum with it's slow possession buildup and cheese effects; it has not aged well but is a captivating mix of campiness and menacing giving it a dreamlike quality. There are some fun kills and I'm a sucker for demon films. Format: Digital [Prime].1st Theme
144. Earnest Scared Stupid (1991, 91 minutes) ★★★★★★✰✰✰✰ Great creature effects, a fun soundtrack, and shadows of childhood nostalgia make this a fun rewatch. I don't think Earnest has aged as well as some other 80s icons. Format: Digital [Vudu HD].
145. The Black Room (2017, 91 minutes) ★★★★★½✰✰✰✰ Sleazy and comedic film that seems to push the envelope. I don't think it's a 'good' film but I've enjoyed it with cheesy occult gimmicks and corny sex jokes it's ultimately a low brow, but not stupid, film that cannot be taken seriously and I'm a sucker for demons. Format: Digital [Vudu HD].

October 22 [Letterboxd 50 Best Horror You've Never Seen Theme Night] (9 hours, 56 minutes watched)
146. Audition (1999, 115 minutes) ★★★★★★★★½✰ Chilling slow burn that nails themes related to modern angst. I wasn't sure it wouild hold up on repeat viewings but aside from the sensationalism there's a lot of complicated themes and ambiguity leaving me trying to figure it out. Format: Digital [Vudu HD]. Theme subset
147. Joshua (2007, 106 minutes) ★★★★★★★✰✰✰ Captures some of the disillusioned hardship of parenthood simmering into a slow cryptic payoff with overall great tone in a drama heavy approach to subtle horror. Each character is sympathetic at different points in the film and the balance of that varies from end of the movie to the next.
There are some subtle details that I think imply more to the story without spelling them out (for example hinting that none of the kids are baptised could be random, or could imply something diabolical). Format: Digital [Vudu HD].1st Theme
148. Romina (2018, 77 minutes) ★★★★½✰✰✰✰✰ Scenic campout takes a brutal twist leading to kills that mostly happen off screen and shows some talent behind the camera but little of reward for gorehounds and superficial enough there's ultimately little merit beyond the experimentation of low violence slashing. A twist or two makes for little payoff in the end. Format: Digital [Vudu HD].1st
149. Prophecy (1979, 102 minutes) ★★★★★★½✰✰✰ Preachy ecological thriller with great effects and and maybe too much buildup to the reveal that we all know about after so many years. Format: Digital [Vudu HD].1st Theme
150. Hard Candy (2005, 104 minutes) ★★★★★½✰✰✰✰ Witty dialog that is maybe a little too scripted dovetailing into an unusual sexual thriller; the feminist themes are interesting but a little too direct with both principles being one dimension in overexaggerating plot related qualities. Format: Digital [Vudu HD].1st
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151. The Prodigy (2019, 92 minutes) ★★★★✰✰✰✰✰✰ Serviceable film with a lukewarm plot but some stylish effects. Some corny touches keep it from becoming better - like the different color eyes or a serial killer that's very average in persona. Format: Digital [Vudu HD].1st
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October 23 [Home Invasion Theme Night] (? hours, ? minutes watched)
152. 2 Pigeons (2017, 80 minutes) ★★★★✰✰✰✰✰✰ Economic based thriller with a gnarly looking home invader and some gross out antics that is low key in a sort of battle between the embittered whiny invader and a punky sarcastic loser. Format: Digital [Vudu HD].1st Theme
153. The Man in the Orange Jacket (2014, 71 minutes) ★★★★★½✰✰✰✰ Hallucinatory imagery with a seemingly thoughtful but impenetrable plot of an invader in an orange construction style vest inside the lavish mansion of a manager that seems to ask questions of who the truly invader is and who the manager. Format: Digital [HD]. 1st Theme
154. Tiger House (2015, 80 minutes) ★★★★✰✰✰✰✰✰ Home invasion thriller where a teenage girl defies the mercenary abilities of tactical soldiers standing against them with a crossbow that has some ok twists that are telegraphed early no the least of which is how invincible teenage girls can be. Format: Digital [HD]. Theme
155. Us (2019, 116 minutes) ★★★★★½✰✰✰✰ Us does not live up to the hype, or standards of Get Out, even if it's a good film that shows promise. It does seem abstract and thoughtful so maybe part of it is that I haven't puzzled it out well enough; great tone and style but seems to play with great ideas that don't really go anywhere. I read some about Us being about xenophobic paranoia or situational classism but don't think those stick because of the whole backstory to the invaders which overexplains them to the point they no longer fit those thematic generalities and ends up seeming to provide more answers than there are questions while still leaving loose ends. Format: Digital [Vudu 4K]. Theme Subset

October 24 [Retail Theme Night] (10 hours, 58 minutes watched)
156. Nina Forever (2015, 98 minutes) ★★★★★★½✰✰✰ The plot is clever but some of the characters too fragile they're 'emo' and hard to empathize with making the ending seem especially odd. It elevates the film beyond a simple ghost story adding some psychological depth with a film more about psychological headspace and tragic preoccupation than grief alone but to a point sometimes a stretch. Format: Digital [Vudu HD]. Theme Subset
157. Gravy (2015, 98 minutes) ★★★★½✰✰✰✰✰ An assault on the senses with constant clash of upbeat banter and music clashing with gore in nonstop stylized irony, much of the humor falls flat but and is overly emphasized to the point of being obnoxious and dulling tension. Format: Digital [Vudu HD].1st Theme
158. The Greasy Strangler (2016, 95 minutes) ★★★½✰✰✰✰✰✰ Prosthetic penises in a odd film staring John Travalta's hairdresser with gross out humor that rarely works and is odd to a fault; it's ending is far out enough but rarely feels as effective as it is ambitious. Format: Digital [Vudu HD].1st Theme
159. Tone-Deaf (2019, 87 minutes) ★★★★★✰✰✰✰✰ Richard Bates Jr, or Excision fame, deserves credit for usually balancing quirky characters with gruesome impact but his films seems increasingly less successful with Tone-Dead where some of the humor doesn't hit and the slow burn is more pathetic towards the characters than sizzling. Format: Digital [Vudu HD].1st
160. Herbert West Reanimator (2017, 84 minutes) ★★★★★★½✰✰✰ Italian surreal horror with little similarity to the popular Stuart Gordon adaptation focusing here on the phenomenon of death and what happens in the silence between life rather than zombie carnage. Characters stand in black space remembering life's tragedies with some artful direction with cosmic and metaphysical factors. I liked the weighty more existential bend to Reanimator but am not sure I understood all of it. Format: Digital [Vudu HD].1st
161. Dead Night (2017, 83 minutes) ★★★★★★★✰✰✰ Far out nocturnal events that meld from one oddity to another for an ultimately satisfying tale with supernatural twists. Barbara Crampton steals the show. Format: Digital [Vudu HD].1st
162. Velvet Buzzsaw (2019, 113 minutes) ★★★★½✰✰✰✰✰ Pretentious art twits backstab for culture as the most obviously disposable characters get knocked off in nicely odd ways, doesn't take enough risks or highlight very empathetic characters setting up a premise that cannot be easily resolved other than in disappointment. Format: Digital [Netflix 4K].1st

October 25 [Joe Bob Briggs Theme Night] (10 hours, 48 minutes watched)
163. Society [The Last Drive-in With Joe Bob Briggs] (2019 for Joe Bob Briggs Last Drive-in and 1989 for Society, 142 minutes) ★★★★½✰✰✰✰✰ You cannot beat the gnarly special effects and abstract theme of Society; which is fortunate because the plot is lacking. I like the attempt at class commentary but this brand of snob is somewhat not relevent to today's social climate so Society hasn't aged well. Overall it's a fun film worthy of cult status so long as you don't dwell too much on it. It's the kind of film you could watch the last half of and not miss a lot other than redundant build up. Joe Bob Briggs always seems to make movies better. Format: Digital [Shudder]. Theme Subset
164. The Ranger (2018, 77 minutes) ★★★½✰✰✰✰✰✰ I cannot decide if The Ranger is refreshingly straight forward and unpretentious telling the exactly predictably story with twists that are hinted at a mile in advance; ultimately I didn't enjoy it as much with a cold open that shows the villain is a villain but maybe works as standard slasher element distilled down to their most basic elements. There's an odd pink power drug that makes no sense and punk kids whose behavior is inexplicable even by punk kid standards. Format: Digital [Shudder]. 1st
165. 8989 Redstone (2016, 81 minutes) ★★★½✰✰✰✰✰✰ Ambitious parody of home improvement makeover shows that quickly turns into a framework for showcasing a bossy hothead stomping around an eerie house where the drama is never very tense and the supernatural makes some cameos then an ending that is abrupt and off putting but maybe the best part of the film, which isn't saying much. Format: Digital [Vudu HD]. 1st
166. Let Her Out (2016, 89 minutes) ★★★★✰✰✰✰✰✰ Starts off strong with a enigmatic sex worker and mysterious stranger then morphs into the sort of film that tells you it's premise then acts like the premise should be a surprise for the next 50 minutes using elements that don't feel unfamiliar. Format: Digital [Shudder]. 1st
167. Der Nachtmahr (2015, 92 minutes) ★★★★★★★½✰✰ Dark fantasy with an edge of sweetness that was compelling enough to make me ignore some dodgy effects and one of the only movies to have me cheering inside for an outcome. Format: Digital [Shudder]. 1st
168. Creep 2 (2017, 78 minutes) ★★★★★★★✰✰✰ A bittersweet romance that perfectly follows the theme set by Creep combining socially awkward comedy and murder. There are more than a few surprises and some scenes that are endearing working well to propel the character driven film homerun even if some of the characters act in implausible ways. Format: Digital [Vudu HD]. 1st
169. He's Out There (2018, 89 minutes) ★★★★★★½✰✰✰ Despite stupid decisions an enjoyable and tense slasher film with strange twists and a cool villain. It's flirts with being boilerplate but has good enough pacing and odd enough touches to be more engaging than more. Format: Digital [Vudu HD]. 1st

October 26 [TV/Casino/Aerobic/Misc Theme Night] (9 hours, 14 minutes watched)
170. Climax (2018, 97 minutes) ★★★✰✰✰✰✰✰✰ Admirable attempt at making a video incorporating dance with a kinetic fun vibe but despite getting darker never seems to escape a sort of aimlessness with turns that are either too cryptic for me to appreciate or way too straight forward they seem dull. Format: Digital [Vudu HD]. 1st
171. Death Spa (1989, 88 minutes) ★★★★★★★✰✰✰ Despite the intentionally cheesy setup there is a solid haunted house film with better than average kills beneath the neon veneer even if parts of it are a slog to get through. I wish more supernatural thrillers were this willing to take chances stepping out of timeless darkness clad mansions and into more modern stylized settings even at the risk of getting dated. Death Spa gleefully does not care about it's premise and just goes for broke - doesn't matter so long as it looks cool and is a memorable kill. The go for broke approach to epic kills with better than average effects and a crazy villain ultimately pays off even if it flirts with being unintentionally comedic with it's intentionally oddball premise. Format: Digital [Vudu HD]. 1st
172. Night Vision (1987, 102 minutes) ★★★½✰✰✰✰✰✰ Satanic tape that feels like a good idea for a film but also one that's been done better in other ways; maybe it was the poor quality on YouTube but this film seemed mostly boring and dated. Format: Digital [Youtube (poor quality awful sound)]. 1st Theme
173. The Golem (2018, 95 minutes) ★★★★★★★½✰✰ History setting in a scenic valley brings an atmospheric and moody approach to golem that feels epic in scope. Format: Digital [Vudu HD]. 1st
174. Digging Up the Marrow (2014, 89 minutes) ★★★★★★★✰✰✰ Found footage featuring many genre cameos and a cool premise but suffers from some of the shaky camera too brief glipse pitfalls that plague many found footage films; casting Ray Wise in a 'found footage' film is an example of some of the sly humor here. Format: Digital [Vudu HD]. 1st
175. Haunters: The Art of the Scare (2017, 88 minutes) ★★★★★★✰✰✰✰ Festive documentary that has some disjointed fragments covering multiple haunted house locations interchangeable but showing some preoccupation with a more extreme haunt so gets a little unbalanced in attempting to cover so many without a lot of specifics about any. Format: Digital [Netflix]. 1st
176. The Perfection (2014, 90 minutes) ★★★★★½✰✰✰✰ Rewarding twists using a cool rewind gimmick to reveal a different vantage point for some of the plot - sets up a fantastic image for the finale that looks sizzingly unique but doesn't make much sense. Format: Digital [Netflix]. 1st

October 27 [Party Theme Night] (13 hours, 31 minutes watched)
177. The Neon Demon [Unrated](2016, 117 minutes) ★★★★½✰✰✰✰✰ Pretentious commentary on 'beauty' that's artful at times but feels shallow like a long dramatic pause between words - the sort of film a director might make about beauty standards in Los Angelos that the rest of us cannot readily relate to. Captivating style and narrative techniques. Format: Digital [Vudu HD]. 1st Theme
178. Don't Fuck In the Woods (2016, 73 minutes) ★★★★✰✰✰✰✰✰ An indie movie with heart featuring a creature that looks like it was made partially with trash bags and old halloween latex haunting tent sex scenes not without scenic aspects of walking through the woods at night or an ending that's admirable for what must have been an inexperiences crew on a small budget. There's easily 10 minutes of 'bloopers' after the credits as filled but apparently there's to be a sequel. Format: Digital [Vudu HD]. 1st Theme
179. Starry Eyes (2014, 98 minutes) ★★★★★★✰✰✰✰ A film that's more about experience than plot with a simple narrative slow burn with some deadpan humor about a movie within a movie called The Silver Scream (which I suspect is really the film we're watching) and workplace humor but it's all so grim that those details don't land amongst the gore. Many of the secondary character feel underdeveloped. Format: Digital [Vudu HD]. Theme
180. The Heretics (2017, 87 minutes) ★★★★★★★✰✰✰ Fantasy horror with engaging twists and spectacular effects; it's over the top and just when it seems too odd or mundane becomes unpredictable. Almost as quick as you can say 'she would never really do that...' it twists. Format: Digital [Vudu HD]. Theme
181. Haxan (1922, 107 minutes) ★★★★★★½✰✰✰ Recounts approaches through witchraft over the ages in a way that seems both educational and ironically funny using some cartoonish effects and filled with pagentry trying to balance a frank tone with dismissiveness. It's slow enough in some segments it's less interesting and a triumph of style over substance in others.Format: Digital [Vudu HD].
182. The Seventh Curse (1986, 78 minutes) ★★★★✰✰✰✰✰✰ I didn't enjoy the fantasy adventure elements of Seventh Curse as much but the practical special effects and kung fu are great. Just when some of the oddball antics that feel like filler get boring something interesting and crazy happens with an ending not to be missedFormat: Digital [Prime]. 1st Theme Subset
183. Scooby Doo and the Witch's Ghost (1999, 77 minutes) ★★★★★½✰✰✰✰ Fast paced with 2 mask reveals by the mid-way point and an unusual twist to the villain with some environmental Captain Planet style preaching about wiccans by glam rock vampires. Format: Digital [Youtube SD]. Theme
184. Always Shine (2016, 85 minutes) ★★★★★★★✰✰✰ Slow burn competition that seems deep as it's simmers over and proceeds to get subtly meta leaving me with something to think more about and probably the sort of film I'll revisit again soon.Format: Digital [Vudu HD].
185. House of 1,000 Corpses (2003, 89 minutes) ★★½✰✰✰✰✰✰✰ Obnoxious trash - ambient subtle soundtrack works really well - there are often slow stray notes throughout the film. Rob Zombie could not write dialog to save his life and just shoves so much into this that it feels like random non-plot. It's too derative of Texas Chainsaw Massacre 1-2 and other films under using more original elements like Doctor Satan.Format: Digital [Vudu HD]. Subset

October 28 [Anthology Theme Night] (7 hours, 35 minutes watched)
186. Field Guide to Evil (2018, 117 minutes) ★★★½✰✰✰✰✰✰ Some segments feel too abridged and some too confusing in part because they parade the creature features of spirits without buildup that would seem necessary for effective scares and thoughtfulness. There are a few images that stick but a lot that doesn't work and it ultimately felt frustrating despite slick production standards. Format: Digital [Vudu HD]. 1st Theme
187. Nightmare Cinema (2018, 120 minutes) ★★★★★✰✰✰✰✰ Decent anthology film with a tired premise of a movie theater where a caretaker played unenthusistically by Mickey Rourke makes wooden banter - the segments in general are fun and start out strongest. Format: Digital [Vudu HD]. 1st Theme
188. Vault of Horror (2018, 120 minutes) ★★★★★★✰✰✰✰ I enjoyed Vault of Horror tonight. I especially liked the vampire one and the wraparound story is neat. Format: Digital [Alyxstarr]. Theme Subset
189. Minutes Past Midnight (2016, 98 minutes) ★★★★½✰✰✰✰✰ Collection of small studio shorts; there are a few that are interesting and one with scat humor. Serviceable but not stellar. Format: Digital [Alyxstarr]. Theme Subset

October 29 [Supernatural Theme Night] (13 hours, 52 minutes watched)
190. Tigers Are Not Afraid (2017, 83 minutes) ★★★★★★★½✰✰ Magical realism movie with grit and unusual supernatural forces that work around human drama rather than provide the antagonist of the film giving it a unique structure. There are some heart wrenching scenes but parts of it related to life on the streets in Mexico feel unrealistic (or Mexico is more harsh than I realize). Format: Digital [Shudder]. 1st Theme Subset
191. The Last Will and Testament of Rosalind Leigh (2012, 82 minutes) ★★★★★★✰✰✰✰ Ending makes the film that is sometimes slow and seems to hit a homerun by spinning it's horror elements in a thematic way at the conclusion. Format: Digital [Vudu HD]. 1st Theme
192. Perfect Blue (1997, 81 minutes) ★★★★★★★✰✰✰ Psychadelic anime cartoon with kpop, murder, meta elements, and a lot of red herrings. Upbeat and myserious. Format: Digital [Vudu HD]. 1st
193. The Lighthouse (2019, 109 minutes) ★★★✰✰✰✰✰✰✰ Competently made artistry that's slow going with mind messing that is too intentionally cryptic and what plot there was is slow going. I usually like like abstract films like this but it felt somewhat random with contradictions or occasional fantastic images that didn't go anywhere obvious. After watching it I looked up more about it online because I thought I had somehow missed part of it and did not appear to. Maybe future re-watches will change my mind.Format: Theatrical. 1st Theme
194. Zombieland: Double Tap (2019, 99 minutes) ★★★★★½✰✰✰✰ An upbeat 'metal' film that's fun but leaves one wondering if there's not a better film in there somewhere. A 'plot' that's more stupid comedic than the original and some bits that just don't work carried out with gleeful carnage; at it's best when it embraces hang out buddy comedy zombie action and it's worse when machinations are moving the characters towards a goal. I was not a fan of some of the additions. Format: Theatrical. 1st
195. St. Agatha (2018, 103 minutes) ★★★★★★✰✰✰✰ Blends subgenres well; St Agatha is the nunsploitation film we didn't know we needed. The plot is detailed enough that it elevates some of the more standard elements to feel like more is going on with little touches like an off screen whispering voice that suggests more afoot. Format: Digital [Vudu HD]. 1st Theme
196. Butterfly Kisses (2018, 91 minutes) ★★★★★★★★✰✰ Found footage with a cool premise of the camera being haunted by a Babadook looking 'Peeping Tom' with a documentary about a documentary that dissects the phenomena across time in interesting ways. It's creepy and cynical about the creepiness at the same time. Format: Digital [Vudu HD]. 1st Theme
197. Honeybee (2016, 95 minutes) ★★★★★★½✰✰✰ Awkwardly acted indie film that rewards patience and takes changes. Format: Digital [Vudu HD]. 1st Theme
198. Devoured (2012, 89 minutes) ★★★★★½✰✰✰✰ Slow paced film that hints as social issues and takes a long time to get going ultimately worth seeing but the last part feels like too little too late with a twist that's hardly clever but plays well in the gritty diner environment. I had an idea of the premise before seeing a film that was nothing like I thought it would be, for the better. Format: Digital [Vudu HD]. 1st Theme

October 30 [Demonic/Withcraft Theme Night] (12 hours, 30 minutes watched)
199. The Dead Don't Die (2019, 105 minutes) ★★★★★½✰✰✰✰ Doldrum that flirts with being quirky and scenic. A strange quiet uneventful pacing but swerves more into boring than ironic or clever and seems to waste most of the conflict setup with socially awkward dry comedy. Format: Digital [Vudu 4K]. 1st
200. I Trapped the Devil (2019, 82 minutes) ★★★★½✰✰✰✰✰ Brilliant plot that fizzled with me seeming to turn into three people standing in a dimly lit house, ambitious beyond it's reach. Format: Digital [Vudu HD]. 1st Theme
201. The Wind (2019, 88 minutes) ★★★★★★★✰✰✰ Moody slow horror that ping pongs back and fort in time keep this period western horror well paced. Format: Digital [Vudu HD]. 1st Theme
202. The Demon's Rook (2013, 103 minutes) ★★★★★★½✰✰✰ A latex clad figure stands in a field of trees as two characters approach wordlessly with a slow drum beat as they walk - it looks fake and cheap but nails the tone like someone raided the halloween store but went on to direct/produce a serviceable non-sense psychadelic horror. Makes no sense and whatever plot there is disposable. Format: Digital [Vudu HD]. 1st Theme
203. American Guinea Pig: The Song of Solomon (2017, 86 minutes) ★★½✰✰✰✰✰✰✰ Stupid and poorly acted, gorey but in the most nonsensical way with bones randomly breaking for the camera to leer at rivers of blood that give away we're looking at a hose and not veins emphasizing that movies often don't over emphasize gore because it can look pretty fake if not handled with some subtlety. If you've ever wanted to watch minutes long scenes of hammy overacting involving vomitting up organs then swallowing them back for no obvious reason this is the film for you. Format: Digital [Vudu HD]. 1st Theme
204. Welcome to Mercy (2018, 103 minutes) ★★★★★½✰✰✰✰ Mystery that starts off strong then bends over backwards to try to explain it's Welcome to Mercy-verse logic in a payoff that's bittersweet but forced. Format: Digital [Vudu HD]. 1st Theme
205. Return to Horror High (1987, 95 minutes) ★★★★½✰✰✰✰✰ he meta elements are initially fun but then start to feel tired more often than not seeming to intentionally kill any tension which is sort of funny but not as enjoyable. There are already large swaths of movie that seem boring pierced by occassional humor or interesting kills; but maybe I was just not into as much of the back and forth meta elements. Format: Digital [Vudu HD]. 1st Theme Subset
206. The Night Sitter (2018, 88 minutes) ★★★★★½✰✰✰✰ More goofy than scary going for light horror comedy; it's neon splattered and cartoonish but not cartoonish enough. Watching sterotypical nerd, babysitter, obnoxious worrywort, and earnest kid narrate escape routes to each other seems familiar enough stuff that it's near parody and not upbeat enough or over the top to stand out leaving a very average film that's not bad but not great and has red/blue/green neon walls everywhere that are more distracting than immersive. Format: Digital [Vudu HD]. 1st Theme

October 31 [Halloween Theme Night] (4 hours, 22 minutes watched)
207. The Barn (2016, 88 minutes) ★★★★★★½✰✰✰ The Barn is a better than average film with some cool effects (like the pumpkin guy) and thick with ironic lampooning. It's shot with a static looking filter to emulate an old print for the entire film and my biggest complaint is that some of the tone was off because there was so much emphasis on a sort of comedy in making the film look old/dated not just with the filter but in other 'homage' ways. I wasn't expecting as much comedy but the idea of a haunted barn standoff should be a giveaway to expect parody. I'm glad to hear a sequel is in the works. Format: Digital [Vudu HD]. 1st Theme
208. Neverknock (2017, 86 minutes) ★★★★★½✰✰✰✰ Odd premise of a door that when knocked on summons a creature to play on people's fear but it's got a lot of action as one big chase sequence. Format: Digital [Vudu HD]. 1st Theme
209. Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters (2013, 88 minutes) ★★★★½✰✰✰✰✰ Slick production and action oriented horror that's popcorn fun although never scary and with some jokes that aren't very funny (like than Hansel has 'sugar sickness' diabetes). Format: Digital [Vudu 4K].

November 1 [Before Dawn] [Comedy Crossover Theme Night] (1 hour, 30 minutes watched)
210. Another Evil (2016, 90 minutes) ★★★★✰✰✰✰✰✰ Clever plot of a paranormal researcher more clingy and obnoxious that the paranormal and fortunately doesn't fully commit to that because it could have been one note but in keeping some focus on the supernatural it feels like Another Evil never nails down tone especially as it gets to a wonderfully cryptic ending that I'm not sure I have the interest in figuring out more. Format: Digital [Vudu HD]. 1st Theme

Checklist [Completed Minimums]:



Theme Nights [100% Completed]:



Subset Films [100% Completed]:




** List Final - Subset, Checklist, and Theme Nights Complete - 210 films **

coyoteblue

My list is complete

7th (2011) - 51
8th (2012) - 42
9th (2013) - 58
10th (2014) - 50
11th (2015) - 42
12th (2016) - 80
13th (2017) - 53
14th (2018) - 51
15th (2019) - 80

9 Challenges (7-15)
80 Movies
32 First Time Views

First Time Watch - ¤

09/13/2019
01. Bad Moon,, 1996, Eric Red, Movie, Stream, US, Color, ¤
02. Werewolf of London,, 1935, Stuart Walker, Movie, Stream, US, B&W,

09/30/2019
03. Giallothon, "Hour 1", 2019, N/A, Trailers, Stream, Various, Color & B&W, ¤

04. Fiend Without a Face,, 1958, Arthur Crabtree, Movie, Stream, US, B&W,
• My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, "28 Pranks Later", 2016,, TV, Stream, US, Color,

10/01/2019
• Futurama, "The Honking", 2000,, TV, Stream, US, Color,
05. Giallothon, "Hour 2", 2019, N/A, Trailers, Stream, Various, Color, ¤

06. Ghost Sweepers,, 2012, Shin Jung-won, Movie, Stream, KR, Color, ¤

10/02/2019
• Gravity Falls, "The Inconveniencing", 2012,, TV, Stream, US, Color,
• The Monkees, "Monkee See, Monkee Die", 1966,, TV, Stream, US, Color,
07. Giallothon, "Hour 3", 2019, N/A, Trailers, Stream, Various, Color, ¤

08. Blood and Donuts,, 1989, Holly Dale, Movie, Stream, CA, Color, ¤
09. Haunted Honeymoon,, 1986, Gene Wilder, Movie, Stream, US, Color,

10/03/2019
• Psych, "The Devil Is in the Details... And the Upstairs Bedroom", 2009,, TV, Stream, US, Color,
10. Giallothon, "Hour 4", 2019, N/A, Trailers, Stream, Various, Color, ¤

11. Goosebumps,, 2015, Rob Letterman, Movie, Stream, US, Color,

10/04/2019
12. One Cut of the Dead,, 2017, Shinichirou Ueda, Movie, Stream, JP, Color, ¤
13. Blood of Dracula,, 1957, Herbert L. Strock, Movie, Stream, US, B&W,

10/05/2019
14. The Beast, "Part-1", 1996,, TV, Stream, US, Color,
15. The Beast, "Part-2", 1996,, TV, Stream, US, Color,
16. Humanoids From the Deep,, 1980, Barbara Peeters, Movie, Stream, US, Color,

10/06/2019
17. Resident Evil: Degeneration,, 2008, Makoto Kamiya, Movie, Stream, JP, Color,
• Over the Garden Wall, "The Old Grist Mill", 2014,, TV, Stream, US, Color,
18. Monster House,, 2006, Gil Kenan, Movie, Stream, US, Color,
19. The Black Cauldron,, 1985, Richard Rich/Ted Berman, Movie, Stream, US, Color,
20. Mystery Science Theater 3000, "Night of the Blood Beast", 1996,, TV, Stream, US, B&W,

10/07/2019
• Seis Manos, "Toppled", 2019,, ONA, Stream, US, Color, ¤
• Seis Manos, "Grief", 2019,, ONA, Stream, US, Color, ¤
21. Hex,, 2017, George Popov/Jonathan Russell, Movie, Stream, GB, Color, ¤
22. The Black Lizard,, 1981, Chor Yuen, Movie, Stream, HK, Color,

10/08/2019
23. Abbott and Costello Meet the Killer, Boris Karloff,, 1949, Charles Barton, Movie, Stream, US, B&W,
24. Secrets in the Hot Spring,, 2018, Kuan-Hui Lin, Movie, Stream, TW, Color, ¤
• Seis Manos, "Night of the Wolves", 2019,, ONA, Stream, US, Color, ¤
• Seis Manos, "Caged Dogs", 2019,, ONA, Stream, US, Color, ¤

10/09/2019
25. Hellboy Animated: Blood and Iron,, 2007, Victor Cook/Tad Stones, Movie, Stream, US, Color,
26. Dylan Dog: Dead of Night,, 2010, Kevin Munroe, Movie, Stream, US, Color,
• Seis Manos, "Blindfold", 2019,, ONA, Stream, US, Color, ¤
• Seis Manos, "Reunion", 2019,, ONA, Stream, US, Color, ¤

10/10/2019
27. Bats,, 1999, Louis Morneau, Movie, Stream, US, Color,
28. Nightwing,, 1979, Arthur Hiller, Movie, Stream, US, Color, ¤
• Seis Manos, "Between This World and the Next", 2019,, ONA, Stream, US, Color, ¤
• Seis Manos, "The Empty Place", 2019,, ONA, Stream, US, Color, ¤

10/11/2019
29. Rampant,, 2018, Kim Sung-hoon, Movie, Stream, KR, Color, ¤
30. The Head Hunter,, 2018, Jordan Downey, Movie, Stream, US, Color, ¤
• Costume Quest, "Breaker, Breaker / Factory Tour", 2019,, ONA, Stream, US, Color, ¤

10/12/2019
31. Francis in the Haunted House,, 1956, Charles Lamont, Movie, Stream, US, B&W,
32. Charlie Chan at Treasure Island,, 1939, Charles Foster, Movie, Stream, US, B&W,
33. The Addams Family,, 2019, Greg Tiernan/Conrad Vernon, Movie, Drive-in, US, Color, ¤

10/13/2019
34. Resident Evil: Damnation,, 2012, Makoto Kamiya, Movie, Stream, JP, Color,
35. Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit,, 2005, Nick Park/Steve Box, Movie, Stream, GB, Color,
36. Monster on the Campus,, 1958, Jack Arnold, Movie, Stream, US, B&W,
• Over the Garden Wall, "Hard Times at the Huskin' Bee", 2014,, TV, Stream, US, Color

10/14/2019
• Over the Garden Wall, "Schooltown Follies", 2014,, TV, Stream, US, Color
37. The Trollenberg Terror,, 1958, Quentin Lawrence, Movie, Stream, GB, B&W,
38. Curse of the Faceless Man,, 1958, Edward L. Cahn, Movie, Stream, US, B&W,

10/15/2019
39. Overlord,, 2018, Julius Avery, Movie, Stream, US, Color, ¤
40. Priest,, 2011, Scott Stewart, Movie, Stream, US, Color,

10/16/2019
41. Transylvania 6-5000,, 1985, Rudy De Luca, Movie, Stream, US, Color,
42. Die Tür mit den sieben Schlössern,, 1962, Alfred Vohrer, Movie, Stream, DE, B&W, ¤

10/17/2019
43. City of the Dead,, 1960, John Llewellyn Moxey, Movie, Stream, GB, B&W,
44. The Devil Rides Out,, 1968, Terence Fisher, Movie, Stream, GB, Color,

10/18/2019
45. Hold That Ghost,, 1941, Arthur Lubin, Movie, Stream, US, B&W,
46. Paranoaic,, 1963, Freddie Francis, Movie, Stream, GB, B&W, ¤

10/19/2019
47. Horror Express,, 1972, Eugenio Martín, Movie, Stream, GB, Color,
48. Mystery Science Theater 3000, "It Conquered the World", 1991,, TV, Stream, US, B&W,
49. Nothing But the Night,, 1973, Peter Sasdy, Movie, Stream, GB, Color,
50. Cave of the Living Dead,, 1964, Ákos Ráthonyi, Movie, Stream, DE, B&W, ¤

10/20/2019
51. Quatermass II,, 1957, Val Guest, Movie, Stream, GB, B&W,
52. Doom,, 2005, Andrzej Bartkowiak, Movie, Stream, US, Color,
53. Planet of the Vampires,, 1965, Mario Bava, Movie, Stream, IT, Color,
• Over the Garden Wall, "Songs of the Dark Lantern", 2014,, TV, Stream, US, Color,

10/21/2019
54. The Cat,, 1992, Ngai Kai Lam, Movie, Stream, HK, Color,
55. The Peacock King,, 1989, Ngai Kai Lam, Movie, Stream, HK, Color,

10/22/2019
56. Resident Evil,, 2002, Paul W. S. Anderson, Movie, Stream, US, Color,
57. Mortuary Blues,, 1990, Jeff Lau, Movie, Stream, HK, Color,

10/23/2019
58. Resident Evil: Apocalypse,, 2004, Alexander Witt, Movie, Stream, US, Color,
59. Terrified,, 2017, Demián Rugna, Movie, Stream, AR, Color, ¤

10/24/2019
60. Resident Evil: Extinction,, 2007, Russell Mulcahy, Movie, Stream, US, Color,
61. Deadtectives,, 2018, Tony West, Movie, Stream, US, Color, ¤

10/25/2019
62. Resident Evil: Afterlife,, 2010, Paul W. S. Anderson, Movie, Stream, US, Color,
63. Atomik Circus - The Return of James Battle,, 2004, Didier Poiraud/Thierry Poiraud, Movie, Stream, FR, Color,
64. The Vampire Combat,, 2001, Wilson Tong, Movie, Stream, HK, Color,

10/26/2019
65. Resident Evil: Retribution,, 2012, Paul W. S. Anderson, Movie, Stream, US, Color,
66. Silent Rage,, 1982, Michael Miller, Movie, Stream, US, Color,
67. The Vampire Doll,, 2001, Michio Yamamoto, Movie, Stream, HK, Color,

10/27/2019
68. The Seventh Curse,, 1986, Ngai Kai Lam, Movie, Stream, HK, Color,
69. Resident Evil: Vendetta,, 2017, Takanori Tsujimoto, Movie, Stream, JP, Color,
70. Resident Evil: The Final Chapter,, 2016, Paul W. S. Anderson, Movie, Stream, US, Color, ¤
71. The House in Marsh Road,, 1960, Montgomery Tully, Movie, Stream, GB, B&W, ¤

10/28/2019
72. Cold Skin,, 2017, Xavier Gens, Movie, Stream, ES, Color, ¤
73. The Batman vs Dracula,, 2005, Sam Liu/Brandon Vietti/Seung Eun Kim, Movie, Stream, US, Color,

10/29/2019
74. Monsters vs. Aliens,, 2009, Rob Letterman/Conrad Vernon, Movie, Stream, US, Color,
75. Infestation,, 2009, Kyle Rankin, Movie, Stream, US, Color,

10/30/2019
76. To Catch a Virgin Ghost,, 2004, Shin Jung-won, Movie, Stream, KR, Color,
77. Taoism Drunkard,, 1984, Yuen Woo-ping, Movie, Stream, HK, Color,

10/31/2019
78. The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad,, 1949, Clyde Geronimi/Jack Kinney/James Algar, Movie, Stream, US, Color,
79. Scooby-Doo! and the Goblin King,, 2008, Joe Sichta, Movie, Stream, US, Color,
80. Eden Log,, 2007, Franck Vestiel, Movie, Stream, FR, Color,

mrcellophane

List Finalized!
9th Challenge
92 entries
66.5 FTVs
Completed Checklist




*= first time viewing
blue= personal BluRay
purple= personal DVD
green= streaming
red= theatrical presentation
orange= borrowed or rented BD/DVD

1. Thriller (dir. Douglas Heyes / John Brahm)*
   1.7, "The Purple Room" / 1.10, "The Prediction"
   1960 / United States / 100 minutes / R.I.P. Rip Torn / 9-30
   
   
2. Videodrome (dir. David Cronenberg)*
   1983 / Canada / 87 minutes / unrated version / BD / Subset Film / 9-30
   
   
3. Cat People (dir. Jacques Tourneur)
   1942 / United States / 73 minutes / BD / Subset Film / 10-1
   
   
4. The Haunting of Seacliff Inn (dir. Walter Klenhard)*
   1994 / United States / 87 minutes / YouTube / Theme Movie / 10-1
   
   
5. Devil Dog: The Hound of Hell (dir. Curtis Harrington)*
   1985 / United States / 95 minutes / YouTube / Theme Movie / R.I.P. Ken Kercheval / 10-1
   
   
6. Cat's Eye (dir. Lewis Teague)*
   1978 / United States / 94 minutes / Theme Movie / 10-1
   
   
7. The Brotherhood of Satan (dir. Bernard McEveety)*
   1971 / United States / 92 minutes / 10-1
   
   
8. The People Across the Lake (dir. Arthur Allan Seidelman)*
   1988 / United States / 95 minutes / YouTube / R.I.P. Valerie Harper / 10-2
   
   
9. I Married a Monster from Outer Space (dir. Gene Fowler Jr.)
   1958 / United States / 78 minutes / Theme / 10-2
   
   
10. The Seventh Victim (dir. Mark Robson)
    1943 / United States / 71 minutes / Criterion Channel / 10-3
    
    
11. Waxwork (dir. Anthony Hickox)*
    1988 / United States / 95 minutes / AmazonPrime / 10-3
    
    
12. I Walked with a Zombie (dir. Jacques Tourneur)*
    1943 / United States / 69 minutes / Theme Movie / Criterion Channel / 10-4
    
    
13. The Fog (dir. John Carpenter)
    1980 / United States / 90 minutes / 10-4
    
    
14. Thriller (dir. Ida Lupino)*
    2.1, "What Beckoning Ghost?" / 2.2, "Guillotine"
    1960 / United States / 100 minutes / 10-4
    
    
15. The Nightcomers (dir. Michael Winner)*
    1971 / United Kingdom / 96 minutes / kanopy / 10-4
    
    
16. The Four Skulls of Jonathan Drake (dir. Edward L. Cahn)
    1959 / United States / 70 minutes / 10-5
    
    
17. Torture Garden (dir. Freddie Francis)*
    1967 / United Kingdom / 100 minutes / 10-5
    
    
18. Phenomena (dir. Dario Argento)*
    1985 / Italy / 111 minutes / AmazonPrime / Subset Movie / 10-5
    
    
19. Death Line (dir. Gary Sherman)*
    1972 / United Kingdom / 87 minutes / Shudder / Theme Movie / 10-5
    
    
20. The Creeping Flesh (dir. Freddie Francis)*
    1973 / United Kingdom / 92 minutes / Theme Movie / 10-6
    
    
21. Monster House (dir. Gil Kenan)
    2006 / United States / 91 minutes / Subset Movie / 10-6
    
    
22. Deadly Messages (dir. Jack Bender)*
    1985 / United States / 94 minutes / YouTube / 10-7
    
    
23. Shadow of the Vampire (dir. E. Elias Merhige)*
    2000 / United States / 92 minutes / AmazonPrime / 10-7
    
    
24. Frankenstein Created Woman (dir. Terence Fisher)
    1967 / United Kingdom / 92 minutes / 10-7
    
    
25. The Cradle Will Fall (dir. John Llewellyn Moxey)*
    1983 / United States / 100 minutes / YouTube / 10-8
    
    
26. Stillwatch (dir. Rod Holcomb)*
    1987 / United States / 118 minutes / YouTube / with original commercials / R.I.P. John Wesley / 10-8
    
    
27. Sleepaway Camp (dir. Robert Hiltzik)*
    1983 / United States / 85 minutes / AmazonPrime / Theme Movie / 10-8
    
    
28. Hush (dir. Mike Flanagan)*
    2016 / United States / 81 minutes / Netflix / Theme Movie / 10-8
    
    
29. Mystery Science Theater 3000 (dir. Kevin Murphy)*
    9.12, "The Incredibly Strange Creatures Who Stopped Living and Became Mixed-Up Zombies"
    1997 / United States / 91 minutes / Netflix / 10-9
    
    
30. Paranoiac (dir. Freddie Francis)
    1963 / United Kingdom / 80 minutes / 10-9
    
    
31. Little Evil (dir. Eli Craig)*
    2017 / United States / 94 minutes / Netflix / Theme Movie / 10-10
    
    
32. Children of the Corn (dir. Fritz Kiersch)*
    1984 / United States / 89 minutes / Hulu / 10-10
    
    
33. The Legend of the 7 Golden Vampires (dir. Roy Ward Baker / Cheh Chang)
    1974 / United Kingdom & Japan / 80 minutes / 10-10
    
    
34. The House Where Evil Dwells (dir. Kevin Connor)*
    1982 / United States & Japan / 88 minutes / 10-10
    
    
35. Horror Noire: A History of Black Horror (dir. Xavier Burgin)*
    2019 / United States / 83 minutes / Shudder / 10-11
    
    
36. Son of Ingagi (dir. Richard C. Kahn)*
    1940 / United States / 62 minutes (missing footage) / AmazonPrime / 10-11
    
    
37. The Mummy (dir. Terence Fisher)
    1959 / United Kingdom / 88 minutes / 10-12
    
    
38. Psycho II (dir. Richard Franklin)*
    1983 / United States / 113 minutes / 10-12
    
    
39. The Bat People (dir. Jerry Jameson)*
    1974 / United States / 93 minutes / 10-12
    
    
40. Mystery Science Theater 3000 (dir. Kevin Murphy)*
    11.10, "It Lives by Night"
    1999 / United States / 92 minutes / 10-12
    
    
41. The Fan (dir. Eckhart Schmidt)*
    1982 / Germany / 92 minutes / BD / 10-13
    
    
42. Scooby-Doo on Zombie Island (dir. Hiroshi Aoyama / Kazumi Fukushima / Jim Stenstrum)
    1998 / United States / 77 minutes / Theme Movie / 10-13
    
    
43. Magic (dir. Richard Attenborough)*
    1978 / United States / 107 minutes / Shudder / 10-13
    
    
44. Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man (dir. Roy William Neill)
    1943 / United States / 74 minutes / Theme Movie / 10-13
    
    
45. The Phantom Creeps (dir. Ford Beebe / Saul A. Goodkind)*
    1939 / United States / 78 minutes / 1949 television cut / AmazonPrime / 10-14
    
    
46. The House That Screamed (dir. Narciso Ibáñez Serrador)*
    1969 / Spain / 105 minutes / extended cut / Alyxstarr Link / Subset Movie / R.I.P. Narciso Ibáñez Serrador / 10-14
    
    
47. Bone Tomahawk (dir. S. Craig Zahler)*
    2015 / United States / 132 minutes / AmazonPrime / R.I.P. Sid Haig / 10-14
    
    
48. The Mummy's Curse (dir. Leslie Goodwins)
    1944 / United States / 60 minutes / Subset Movie / 10-14
    
    
49. Hobgoblins (dir. Rick Sloane)*
    1988 / United States / 93 minutes / 13 Nights of Elvira episode / AmazonPrime / 10-15
    
    
50. Hellboy Animated: Sword of Storms (dir. Phil Weinstein / Tad Stones)
    2006 / United States / 77 minutes / 10-15
    
    
51. One Cut of the Dead (dir. Shin'ichirô Ueda)*
    2017 / Japan / 97 minutes / Shudder / Subset Movie / 10-15
    
    
52. The Curse of the Cat People (dir. Gunther von Fritsch / Robert Wise)
    1944 / United States / 70 minutes / 10-16
    
    
53. Doom (dir. Andrzej Bartkowiak)*
    2005 / United States / 113 minutes / unrated cut / 10-17
    
    
54. Season of the Witch (dir. George A. Romero)*
    1972 / United States / 90 minutes / 10-17
    
    
55. Into the Dark: All That We Destroy (dir. Chelsea Stardust)*
    2019 / United States / 90 minutes / Hulu / 10-17
    
    
56. The Triangle (dir. Lewis Teague)*
    2001 / United States / 92 minutes / YouTube / R.I.P. Luke Perry / 10-18
    
    
57. God Told Me To (dir. Larry Cohen)*
    1976 / United States / 91 minutes / Shudder / Subset Movie / R.I.P. Larry Cohen / 10-18
    
    
58. Bride of Re-Animator (dir. Brian Yuzna)*
    1989 / United States / 96 minutes / R.I.P. John Carl Buechler / 10-18
    
    
59. Hellboy Animated: Blood and Iron (dir. Victor Cook / Tad Stones)
    2007 / United States / 75 minutes / 10-19
    
    
60. The Queen of Spades (dir. Thorold Dickinson)*
    1949 / United Kingdom / 95 minutes / kanopy / 10-19
    
    
61. Dark Night of the Scarecrow (dir. Frank De Felitta)*
    1981 / United States / 96 minutes / Tubi / 10-19
    
    
62. Cry of the Banshee (dir. Gordon Hessler)*
    1970 / United Kingdom / 91 minutes / AmazonPrime / Theme Movie / 10-19
    
    
63. The Lair of the White Worm (dir. Ken Russell)*
    1988 / United Kingdom / 93 minutes / AmazonPrime / 10-19
    
    
64. Dracula (dir. Tod Browning)
    1931 / United States / 75 minutes / Theme Movie / 10-20
    
    
65. Viy (dir. Konstantin Ershov / Georgiy Kropachyov)*
    1967 / Soviet Union / 77 minutes / Subset Movie / 10-20
    
    
66. Zombieland: Double Tap (dir. Ruben Fleischer)*
    2019 / United States / 99 minutes / 10-20
    
    
67. Blade (dir. Stephen Norrington)*
    1998 / United States / 120 minutes / Theme Movie / 10-20
    
    
68. The Two Faces of Dr. Jekyll (dir. Terence Fisher)
    1960 / United Kingdom / 88 minutes / 10-20
    
    
69. The Island of Dr. Moreau (dir. Don Taylor)*
    1977 / United States / 99 minutes / AmazonPrime / 10-21
    
    
70. Midsommar (dir. Ari Aster)*
    2019 / United States / 147 minutes / BD / 10-21
    
    
71. The Haunting (dir. Jan de Bont)*
    1999 / United States / 113 minutes / Hulu / 10-22
    
    
72. Bram Stoker's Dracula (dir. Francis Ford Coppola)
    1992 / United States / 128 minutes / 10-22
    
    
73. The Hound of the Baskervilles (dir. Terence Fisher)*
    1959 / United Kingdom / 87 minutes / hoopla / 10-23
    
    
74. Creature from the Black Lagoon (dir. Jack Arnold)
    1954 / United States / 79 minutes / R.I.P. Julie Adams / 10-23
    
    
75. i-Lived (dir. Franck Khalfoun)*
    2015 / United States / 97 minutes / 10-24
    
    
76. They Live (dir. John Carpenter)*
    1988 / United States / 93 minutes / BD / Theme Movie / 10-24
    
    
77. Top of the Food Chain (dir. John Paizs)*
    1999 / Canada / 99 minutes / Hulu / 10-25
    
    
78. It Follows (dir. David Robert Mitchell)
    2014 / United States / 100 minutes / 10-25
    
    
79. The Black Cat (dir. Edgar G. Ulmer)
    1934 / United States / 65 minutes / 10-26
    
    
80. Seoul Station (dir. Sang-ho Yeon)*
    2016 / South Korea / 92 minutes / 10-26
    
    
81. Godzilla: Final Wars (dir. Ryûhei Kitamura)
    2004 / Japan / 125 minutes / 10-27
    
    
82. The Mummy (dir. Karl Freund)
    1932 / United States / 73 minutes / 10-27
    
    
83. The Simpsons (dir. Timothy Bailey)*
    31.4, "Treehouse of Horror XXX"
    2019 / United States / 22 minutes / Hulu / 10-27
    
    Bob's Burgers (dir. Chris Song)*
    10.4, "Pig Trouble in Little Tina"
    2019 / United States / 22 minutes / Hulu / 10-27
    
    Tales from the Crypt (dir. Peter Medak / Russell Mulcahy)*
    4.7, "The New Arrival" / 5.5, "People Who Live in Brass Hearses"
    1992-1993 / United States / 45 minutes / 10-27
    
    
84. The Haunted Castle (dir. F.W. Murnau)*
    1921 / Germany / 82 minutes / kanopy / 10-27
    
    
85. Alice, Sweet Alice (dir. Alfred Sole)*
    1976 / United States / 98 minutes / AmazonPrime / 10-28
    
    
86. The Addams Family (dir. Barry Sonnenfeld)
    1991 / United States / 99 minutes / 10-29
    
    
87. The Gate (dir. Tibor Takács)*
    1987 / Canada / 85 minutes / AmazonPrime / 10-29
    
    
88. Isle of the Dead (dir. Mark Robson)
    1945 / United States / 71 minutes / Criterion Channel / 10-30
    
    
89. Addams Family Values (dir. Barry Sonnenfeld)
    1993 / United States / 94 minutes / 10-30
    
    
90. Mandy (dir. Panos Cosmatos)*
    2018 / United States / 121 minutes / Shudder / 10-30
    
    
91. Dead End (dir. Jean-Baptiste Andrea / Fabrice Canepa)*
    2003 / France / 85 minutes / AmazonPrime / 10-31
    
    
92. Tales from the Crypt (dir. Bob Gale / Elliot Silverstein)*
    5.7, "House of Horrors" / 5.8, "Well Cooked Hams"
    1993 / United States / 52 minutes / 10-31
    
    Tales from the Cryptkeeper
    1.5, "The Works... in Wax" / 1.6, "The Sleeping Beauty"
    1993 / Canada / 44 minutes / Tubi / 10-31

Checklist



Theme Nights



Subset Movies

Surfinhank

rbrown498

This Year's Stats

This year marks my 10th Challenge.

Goal: --
Total Watched: 100

Theme nights, 31 film subset, and Checklist completed.

First Time Viewings: 76 (76%)

Formats Watched:

51 DVD – 51%
32 Streaming (Google Drive, Amazon Prime, Netflix, Shudder, YouTube, Vudu, Shout Factory TV) – 32%
15 Blu-ray - 15%
1 Blu-ray 3D – 1%
1 16mm film print – 1%

Decades:

1930s: 5 (5%)
1940s: 7 (7%)
1950s: 1 (1%)
1960s: 10 (10%)
1970s: 17 (17%)
1980s: 17 (17%)
1990s: 6 (6%)
2000s: 19 (19%)
2010s: 18 (18%)

Longest Film Viewed: Spirits of the Dead (121 minutes)
Shortest Film Viewed: The Mummy’s Curse (60 minutes)

New favorites: Stuck; Tigers Are Not Afraid; Better Watch Out; The Man They Could Not Hang
Will never watch again: The Carrier; The Hills Run Red; My Little Eye; Behind the Walls; Maniac

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Orange Title - Denotes first-time-ever viewing

Caution: Spoilers may follow!

Last year's tally: 55 films; 36 first-time viewings

This year's goal: To enjoy the month without unduly worrying about completing the theme nights, subset, or checklist--I'm not even concerned with how many films I watch. I'm wingin' it, baby!


9/30/2019

Note: This film is not counted in my totals, as it was watched outside the actual month of October. I consider it to be a sort of pre-Challenge warm up.

XX Videodrome (1983) (Blu-ray) – Here's what I wrote about Videodrome when I watched it for the OHCM back in 2013: “While I generally enjoy David Cronenberg's films, Videodrome is an exception. It starts off great, but the longer it goes on, the less sense it makes. By the end of the film, I just don't care WHAT happens to the character of Max Renn. It's not a film that I plan to rewatch anytime soon, but to give credit where credit is due, it features one of my favorite character names of all time: Barry Convex.” As I watched it for this year’s Challenge, I found that I liked it slightly better than I did that last time I watched it six years ago. That’s still not saying that I particularly enjoyed it, however. What I do find fascinating is that it fits so snugly into Cronenberg’s canon, recalling the body horror of Rabid and The Brood (but giving that horror a name: the “new flesh”) while presaging the aberrant sexuality that was the main preoccupation of the characters in Crash. It’s an important work among his films, but I just don’t like it very much.


10/1/2019

1. Cat People (1942) (DVD) – Val Lewton’s first horror film at RKO, Cat People is still my favorite of the seven that he made there. I feel that it’s the first truly modern horror film, as Universal’s output mostly took place in remote European villages at least 100 years ago, and the horror films made at Warner Brothers, while taking place in contemporary times, still showed the influence of Universal in their plotting. But Cat People, with its subject matter of sexual repression very much up-front and its psychiatrist character, has very modern sensibilities. There’s so much to love about it that I think that I need to list the five things that make me most happy about it:

• Simone Simon—she’s quite fetching
• Irena’s line: “I like the dark…it’s friendly.”
• Dr. Judd’s description of childhood trauma: “A canker in the mind”
• The cat in the shipbuilding office’s name: John Paul Jones
• The shot of Oliver when he leaves Irena’s apartment for the first time—it’s a high shot from Irena’s vantage point, looking down at him looking up from the bottom of the staircase

I also feel sorry for all of the caged big cats at the zoo; their cages are so like prison cells that it hurts to think of them actually living in them. While I love all of Lewton’s horror films, this is the first one that I ever saw, and it still resonates the most with me. It’s a well-deserved addition to the Criterion Collection, and one of my two favorite horror films from the 1940s.

2. The Black Cat (1966) (DVD) – What an odd bird this film is! It’s technically crude, with bad sound and sloppy editing, but it’s oddly effective despite its shortcomings (including an incredibly bad shot of a burning “mansion”). The effects are surprisingly graphic for the time, especially the scenes featuring the torture, mutilation, and killing of the titular animal. Being a cat lover, I was more upset at what happened to the cat than at what happened to any of the film’s human actors. The lead actress was pretty awful, but everyone else was quite good, including Pluto the Cat (playing “Pluto the Cat”). You might recognize the bar girl, played by Anne MacAdams, as the same actress who played Dr. Masters in Don’t Look in the Basement a few years later. Worth checking out.

3. The Carrier (1988) (DVD) – This film was a subset film five years ago, but I missed it back then, so I figured that, since it fit today’s theme, I’d give it a watch. That was a bad move on my part. I know that this film has its fans, but I’m most certainly not one of them. The plot, in a nutshell: A guy who lives in a tiny town is attacked by “The Black Thing” and becomes a carrier for a disease that causes any inanimate object that he touches to melt any living thing that comes in contact with it. Naturally, people all over town start melting. The citizens of the town break into two factions that start fighting each other, they mark known contaminated objects with red cloth, cats take on a new significance, and the guy that started it all just wants to get out of town. It’s whacked out, but not a lot of fun. For its budget, it does have some intriguing special effects, but they weren’t enough for me to deem the time spent watching it worthwhile.


10/2/2019

4. [rec] 3: Genesis (2012) (Streaming—Google Drive [Alyxstarr's link])– A wedding reception goes downhill fast when a zombie virus breaks out. That’s the whole plot. Really. This second sequel to the wonderful [ rec] doesn’t break any new ground at all; in fact, I found it to be a step backward in quality, because the first one had some terrific scares in it, and this one doesn’t. It’s been called a comedy, but I didn’t see anything particularly amusing in it, nor I did see anything that was particularly clever. I neither loved it nor hated it; the word that comes to mind when I think of it is “perfunctory”—it’s just another sequel.

5. Honeymoon (2014) (DVD) – A newlywed couple goes to spend their honeymoon at her family’s summer cabin at a remote lake. Awakened by something at 3:45 on their second night there, the husband finds that his new wife has disappeared. He finds her outside in the woods, naked and cold. Once back inside, she shrugs it off as a sleepwalking episode, but he’s not so sure, as her personality and memory seem to be off after the incident. I found this low-key, Invasion of the Body Snatchers-like film engrossing, with great performances and a couple of fairly icky special effects. Recommended.

6. Lovely Molly (2011) (DVD) – Gretchen Lodge is really good in this downbeat film about a woman who gets married and moves with her husband into her childhood home outside of town. As he’s a trucker, she’s in the house alone most of the time. She starts hearing whispering voices and singing, and she soon becomes convinced that her father is haunting the house. This film reminded me a whole lot of The Babadook, which I could never really warm up to…and I feel the same about this film. I appreciate it for what it’s trying to do, and it’s very well-made, but I never felt engaged with it, especially in the middle third of the film (which drags a lot). Still, I feel like I’ll have to give it a second chance at some point in the future, because I think that maybe I was just tired when I watched it and wasn’t up to unraveling its mysteries. The last time we see Molly in the film is super-creepy, and the final shot of the film is intriguing. Worth checking out, but be prepared for a somewhat ambiguous and bleak experience.


10/3/2019

7. Der Fan (1982) (Streaming—Google Drive [Alyxstarr's link])– A German teenager is obsessed with a new wave singer and writes him letter after letter. When she doesn’t get any response, she decides to leave home and track him down. She actually finds him, and he takes an interest in her. Will everything work out for them? For the first hour or so of this film, I kept wondering why it was listed as a horror film. It seemed to be much more like an after-school special than a horror movie…but then the horror movie aspect kicked in, and, maybe because it was so antithetical to what came before it, it got a LOT darker than I thought that it would. It’s not for everyone’s tastes, but I liked it, boring first half and all.

8. My Little Eye (2002) (DVD) – Five uninteresting people are chosen to be on an Internet streaming series wherein they’re forced to live together in an isolated house for six months. The prize: a million dollars, but they’ll only get it if they ALL stay the full six months. The film concerns itself with the last few days of their stay, when “the company” starts trying to force them to leave so that they don’t have to pay the prize money. At first, the nudges are mild, such as delivering a box of bricks instead of the expected food, but the closer the end of their stay gets, the rougher “the company” seems to be playing. It’s an okay film, but the characters are so uninteresting that it’s a chore to work up enough good will toward them to care what happens. Bradley Cooper shows up in one of his first roles.


10/4/2019

9. Zombie (1979) (Blu-ray) – I actually saw this film in the theater way back in 1980, and I felt ripped off. I’ve come to appreciate it a bit more over the years, but I still don’t think that it’s a very good film. It is, however, important in that it kicked off the Italian zombie movie cycle, which, for better or worse, lasted until The Road Warrior kicked off the post-apocalyptic cycle. The theme song is awesome.

10. Juan of the Dead (2011) (DVD) – Not bad horror-comedy takes place in Cuba, where Juan and his pal spend their days doing as little as possible. When the zombie apocalypse breaks out, Juan discovers that he, his friend, and assorted acquaintances and relatives are pretty good at taking down zombies, so they open a for-profit zombie-killing business. I didn’t particularly like the look of the film, but there were enough funny bits to keep me entertained.

11. Zombies on Broadway (1945) (DVD) – Two publicity men, charged with finding a real zombie for the opening of a New York club, go to San Sebastian to find one. They run afoul of Bela Lugosi and Darby Jones, the actor who played the zombie in I Walked with a Zombie, made for the same studio (RKO) two years earlier. They also run into Sir Lancelot, the calypso singer from I Walked with a Zombie, as well. The film stars Wally Brown and Alan Carney as the publicity guys. Brown and Carney were RKO’s very poor, unfunny answer to Abbott and Costello, yet somehow they were still able to make over half a dozen films together for the studio. Don’t let them stop you from seeing the film, however, as it’s fairly fun, with one pretty funny gag involving a monkey.

12. The Return of Dr. X (1939) (DVD) – Humphrey Bogart gets third billing in the opening credits, yet he’s top-billed in the end credits, in this film about a doctor who’s created synthetic blood. It’s not a scary film at all, but it moves fast and doesn’t take itself too seriously. I enjoyed it a lot.


10/5/2019

13. Phenomena (1985) (DVD) – If all the films in Dario Argento’s filmography were titled like Friends episodes, this one would be called “The One Where Jennifer Connelly Talks to Bugs,” or perhaps “The One That Looks Real Good but Doesn’t Make a Lick of Sense.” In it, Jennifer Connelly is sent to a boarding school in Switzerland. It just so happens that there are also some unsolved murders that have taken place in the vicinity, with the victims all being schoolgirls. Also, Jennifer (playing a girl named “Jennifer”) has telepathic rapport with insects, and she sleepwalks, apparently over great distances. Donald Pleasence plays a world-famous entomologist who lives near the school. He has a pet monkey that helps him out with stuff, since he’s confined to a wheelchair due to a car accident. This was originally released in the US by New Line, who cut almost thirty minutes out of it and renamed it Creepers. I like that version better than the full-length release. The soundtrack has some great music on it, including songs by Iron Maiden and Motorhead. I had the cassette.

14. From Beyond the Grave (1974) (DVD) – The last of Amicus’s horror anthology films, From Beyond the Grave is fairly weak sauce. In it, Peter Cushing plays the proprietor of an antique shop, and the stories all involve people who have gotten things from him. In the first story, David Warner buys a haunted mirror; in the second, Donald Pleasence and his daughter Angela are befriended by an unhappy man who has stolen a military medal from Cushing’s shop; in the third, a man who buys a snuff box finds himself host to an elemental spirit that threatens to kill his wife; and in the fourth tale, a guy who buys a door from Cushing to put on his stationary closet finds that an entirely new room lies beyond the door once it’s installed. It’s a fun film, but it’s not scary in the least.

15. Raw Meat (1972) (DVD) – Donald Pleasence stars as a police inspector who notices that a lot of people have gone missing at a particular subway stop. It turns out that the stop is adjacent to a line of the subway system that was abandoned when it collapsed eighty years before, trapping a dozen or so workers in the rubble. These workers didn’t die, however; they and then their ancestors have been living in the tube tunnels ever since. This film features my new favorite Donald Pleasence performance; it’s too bad that Halloween conferred a gravitas to his persona that he was never able to shake, because Raw Meat shows what fun he could be when given an offbeat role.


10/6/2019

16. Monster House (2006) (Blu-ray 3D) – Monster House is an adequate children’s film about a house that’s evil. When the house’s owner is taken away in an ambulance, the house gets really mean and starts eating people. The film’s in 3D, but use of the gimmick is rather restrained. I’m sure that kids will like it fine, but I wasn’t particularly impressed with it.

17. (WILD CARD #1) Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit (2005) (DVD) – I’ve somehow avoided seeing any of the Wallace & Gromit short films over the years, so this was my first introduction to the duo. In it, Wallace and Gromit run a pest-removal service that seems to focus primarily on rabbits. When Wallace combines a couple of contraptions of his to brainwash the rabbits into not liking veggies, it backfires, creating a were-rabbit that threatens to disrupt Lady Tottington’s giant veggie show. I wasn’t expecting much from this film, but it turned out to be quite entertaining.

18. The Green Slime (1968) (Blu-ray) – Another film that I caught in the theater waaay back when. I was probably six or seven when I saw it, and it scared the daylights out of me. I sure did love it, though. Nearly fifty years later, I can’t say that it still scares me, but I do still love it. In it, some green slime from an asteroid that our heroes are sent to blow up gets onto one of their suits and is taken back to the space station from whence they came. Soon, the tiny patch of slime has morphed into dozens of deadly slime creatures, and complications ensue. The theme song is legendary.

19. The Man They Could Not Hang (1939) (DVD) – How have I gone all my life without seeing this movie? Boris Karloff plays a doctor who is sentenced to death, hung, and then brought back to life by an assistant. Naturally, he decides to kill all of the people responsible for giving him the death sentence. It is, in its own way, a kind of a precursor to The Abominable Dr. Phibes…and it moves like lightning. It’s a new favorite oldie of mine.

20. Paranoiac (1963) (Blu-ray) – Oliver Reed chews the scenery (as he is wont to do) in this super-twisty psychological thriller from Hammer. In it, Oliver’s brother, who seemed to have committed suicide eleven years before (he threw himself over a cliff into the ocean, and his body was never found), suddenly shows back up. Oliver’s sister believes that it’s really her brother; Oliver isn’t quite so convinced. I quite enjoyed it, and it gets extra credit for containing a pretty good scare.


10/7/2019

21. Boar (2017) (Streaming—Shudder via Amazon Prime)– A giant feral hog roams Australia, munching on pretty much whatever it wants to. Some people try to stop it; eventually, they succeed. I liked this movie a lot better the first time I saw it thirty-five years ago, when it was called Razorback.

22. Berlin Syndrome (2017) (DVD) – An Australian tourist visiting Munich meets a local, they click, and she decides to extend her visit by a day or two. The local decides that’s not long enough and imprisons her in his isolated apartment. Berlin Syndrome features some very good performances, but the film’s leisurely pacing and overlength really dilute what could have been a solid thriller. It’s not a bad film, but it could have been so much better. Based on a novel.

23. Lake Mungo (2008) (DVD) – A teenaged girl drowns during a family outing; afterwards, strange occurrences lead her family to believe that her ghost is haunting them. Lake Mungo is shot as if it’s a documentary, and the filmmakers have done a remarkable job in making it feel as if it’s a real documentary (I loved the posed shot of the funeral home guys). The story’s intriguing, but by the end I felt that it had piled up, then discarded, too many possible resolutions, and the one that actually ended the film was sort of a let-down after some of the intriguing ideas that had been touched upon beforehand. The film has a really creepy feel to it, but I don’t think that I’d recommend it to casual horror viewers. However, if “The Blair Witch Project meets Kairo” sounds intriguing to you, you should try to get your hands on a copy of it.


10/8/2019

24. Disconnected (1984) (Streaming—Amazon Prime)– A video store clerk starts receiving scary phone calls that unnerve her. At the same time, she starts dating a guy who may or may not be a murderer. Needless to say, her life gets complicated pretty quickly. This dumb-as-dirt cheap slasher film is practically worthless as far as having an interesting story to tell, but as a trip back in time to somewhere around 1984, it’s priceless. The fashions, the technology on display, and especially the video store setting took me right back to my youth. Don’t watch Disconnected for the plot; watch it for a time-trip to a more honest depiction of the ‘80s than Hollywood ever gave us.

25. The Cannibal Man (a.k.a. Apartment on the 13th Floor) (1972) (DVD) – Grim Spanish shocker about a worker at a food-processing plant who kills a cab driver during a fight and then has to keep killing to cover up his previous murder(s). It’s not a fun watch by any stretch of the imagination, but the film did manage to keep my attention the whole way through. I love the dogs that hang around the lead character's house after the bodies begin to stack up inside. Neither of the two titles have a whole lot to do with the film; the first may or may not be accurate, and the second isn’t where the main character lives, but where a friend of his lives. Since the film was made in Spain in the early 1970s, I’m sure that it has some sort of political subtext that I’m not knowledgeable enough about to pick up on.


10/9/2019

26. Dead End (2003) (DVD) – I first saw this film probably ten or so years ago, and it horrified me. I didn’t find it scary, but I did find several of the deaths, especially that of Lin Shaye’s character, to be very hard to take. Therefore, I was dreading watching it again…but I shouldn’t have worried. This time, I saw the film as a pitch-black comedy, and I quite enjoyed it. My favorite moment features the drawing that the mother makes for her daughter. The film seems like it would have made a great Twilight Zone episode; as it stands, the material is stretched a little thin. It’s still enjoyable, though, for those with twisted senses of humor.

27. Open Water (2004) (DVD) – This film, in opposition to Dead End, is nightmare fuel indeed. A married couple goes deep water diving from an excursion boat far out in the ocean, and they accidentally get left behind when a member of the boat’s crew miscounts the number of passengers who have returned from the dive. The rest of the film is the couple treading water, trying to avoid sharks. It’s not a feel-good film by any stretch of the imagination. It’s quite well-made, but I don’t think that I ever want to see it again.

28. Attack of the Beast Creatures (1985) (Streaming—YouTube)– Hysterically awful film concerns itself with a group of people who, due to their ship sinking somewhere in the North Atlantic, are stranded on an island inhabited by “beast creatures.” The majority of the film seems to have been shot in the woods behind someone’s house, and there’s not a real actor in the bunch. The “beast creatures” who terrorize the cast mostly seem to be hand puppets. It’s a must-see film for bad movie devotees.

29. Out of the Darkness (a.k.a. Night Creature) (1978) (DVD) – Donald Pleasence stars as a big-game hunter who’s almost killed by a black panther. He pays to have it caught and released on his private island so that he can hunt it down and kill it without it escaping. Unfortunately, his family shows up unannounced, leading to complications and tragedy. There’s some nice Thai scenery on display, but it’s not Pleasence’s finest hour as an actor, and the film drags a bit in the middle. For a fun drinking game, take a shot every time that the film shows the panther looking straight into the camera. The filmmakers must have used that same shot a dozen or more times.


10/10/2019

30. The Faculty (1998) (DVD) – The Faculty was fairly big news amongst genre enthusiasts when it came out in 1998, primarily because it was written by Kevin Williamson, still hot from writing Scream and Scream 2, and Robert Rodriguez, riding a crest of popularity stemming from having directed Desperado and From Dusk Till Dawn. I saw it, and I thought that it was fun but slight. I still feel that way, although time has been kind to it. If you’ve seen Invasion of the Body Snatchers and all of its remakes and rip-offs, and you still find yourself craving more alien invasion action, you can do worse than The Faculty.

31. Trick 'r Treat (2007) (DVD) – I’ve been hearing good things about this film for years, so I was kind of excited about watching it. Trick ‘r Treat features five interlocking tales of horror set in a small town on Halloween night. Now that I’ve seen it, I’ve got to admit that I have no idea why people go so crazy over this movie. I didn’t hate it, but I truly don’t see anything special about it whatsoever. Give me an Amicus anthology film over this any day. (Does anyone else think that Dylan Baker looks like Stephen Colbert’s identical twin in this film?)


10/11/2019

32. Scouts Guide to the Zombie Apocalypse (2015) (Streaming—Digital Copy via Vudu)– I wasn’t particularly looking forward to watching this, since it’s gotten less-than-stellar reviews and is somewhere under a 50% “Fresh” rating at Rotten Tomatoes, but I ended up enjoying it a lot. In it, three scouts and a stripper team up to try to save one of the scouts’ sister from the usual rampaging zombies. This movie certainly breaks no new ground, but it was a fun way to spend an hour and a half on a Friday afternoon.

33. The Hills Run Red (2009) (Streaming—Google Drive [Alyxstarr's link]) – I’ve now seen the first film that I’ve totally hated of this year’s Challenge. Despite having a great setup (three friends try to track down a legendary lost splatter film and the people who made it), this film seemed to make the wrong choice at every step of the way. It appears to have been shot somewhere in Eastern Europe, if all of the crew names ending in “v” are any indication. Absolutely awful.

34. Tomie (1998) (DVD) – Not entirely successful film about a girl (or is she a demon?) named Tomie, who seems to inspire the people she’s around to murder. She’s always one of the murder victims as well, but she apparently has a way of regenerating herself so that she’s as good as new after a brief period. It’s an intriguing premise (based, as is often the case with Japanese horror films, on a comic), and the lead actresses are good, but it just misses the mark. The soundtrack, however, is exceptional.

35. Zombie Stripper Apocalypse (a.k.a. The Big Tits Dragon and Big Tits Zombie) (2010) (DVD) – With titles like these, I wasn’t expecting this film to be any good…and I was right. Apparently, even though the Japanese version of the film is already whacked out, the version I watched was an American redub job that tried to make it even wackier. It just made it seem that much more stupid. Still, any film that features a zombie with a flame-throwing vagina (as does this one) has to been seen in some form at least once, doesn’t it?


10/12/2019

36. 976-EVIL (1988) (Streaming—Google Drive [Alyxstarr's link]) – I saw this film when it first came out on VHS, and I didn’t particularly care for it then and don’t particularly care for it now. A teenager calls a “Horrorscope” 976 number (for those who don’t remember them, 976 phone numbers automatically billed one’s telephone account at exorbitant by-the-minute rates) and is turned into a demon. Funny how this doesn’t affect his cousin, who calls the number multiple times a day. Oscar winner Sandy Dennis shows up as the kid’s mother and the cousin’s Aunt Lucy and gives a really, really quirky performance. Somehow Robert Englund, the guy who played Freddy Krueger, got a chance to direct with this film. It’s good that he had a day job to fall back on. This film exemplifies everything that was wrong with horror cinema in the late ‘80s.

37. Night Creatures (1962) (Blu-ray) – Fun change of pace for Hammer Films tells the same basic story as the better-known Disney film Dr. Syn, Alias the Scarecrow (which originally aired as a three-episode installment on The Magical World of Disney called The Scarecrow of Romney Marsh). In the Hammer film, Peter Cushing stars as the Reverend Dr. Blyss, who’s a mild-mannered clergyman by day and a smuggler by night. To scare off those who might stumble upon his smuggling operation, he and his men (and their horses) dress up in skeletal costumes and ride through the marsh as the Marsh Phantoms. His little hamlet is visited by an army regiment, sent to determine if there is, indeed, any smuggling going on. Will the army guys find out about the smuggling? Will they also find out that Dr. Blyss is actually Captain Clegg, notorious pirate who was assumed to be dead after a hanging years ago? Or will the Marsh Phantoms scare them away? Look for Oliver Reed in an early role.

38. Without Warning (1980) (Blu-ray) – The first film in a Greydon Clark two-fer for today, Without Warning is about an alien who’s come to Earth to hunt humans. It’s kind of like a cross between It Conquered the World and Predator. (Speaking of Predator, Kevin Peter Hall played both the alien in Without Warning and the Predator in the first two films in that franchise.) It’s low-budget, but it’s not awful. It marks a lot of time in the middle third, but then it picks up for an explosive finale. I remember hearing about this film from friends who saw it back in the early days of HBO.

39. Satan's Cheerleaders (1977) (DVD) – The Greydon Clark double-feature continues with an unusually-annoying film wherein the world’s smallest cheerleading squad runs afoul of some Satanists. It’s one of those films where a character will make a wisecrack, and everyone within earshot laughs…which isn’t the worst thing in the world, usually. But in THIS film, every other line is delivered that way, and the “wisecracks” aren’t funny in the least. This film alone may be responsible for hundreds of teenage pregnancies, as I can imagine that anyone seeing this at the drive-in with a date would bail on it pretty quickly and end up in the backseat.


10/13/2019

40. Wer (2013) (Streaming—Google Drive [Alyxstarr's link]) – I had heard nothing about this film before watching it today, and since it’s been out for a while and hadn’t made it onto my radar, I wasn’t expecting anything great. I was surprised to find that I enjoyed it reasonably well. The CGI effects were fairly crummy, with a whole lot of unconvincing CGI blood splatters, but the practical effects were nicely gruesome. My main complaint was the final big fight; the film veered into comic book territory for it, and it took me out of the film. Up until that fight, however, I found the film to be a fresh take on werewolf tropes.

41. She-Wolf of London (1946) (Blu-ray) – June Lockhart (of Lost in Space and Lassie fame) stars as a girl who believes that she’s the werewolf that’s been murdering people in a park near her house. Even at 61 minutes, this movie drags quite a bit. Directed by Jean Yarbrough, who also directed Bela Lugosi in The Devil Bat and made probably my favorite bad movie, Hillbillys in a Haunted House.

42. Curse of the Devil (1973) (DVD) – Paul Naschy stars as cursed werewolf Waldemar Daninsky for the seventh time in this fairly-gory-for-its-time Spanish shocker. Because of an ancient curse placed upon one of his ancestors, Waldemar Daninsky becomes a werewolf and starts chewing up the populace of his small village. It’s not particularly good, but it’s fun, with some nice-looking actresses in the altogether and some super-fake but still sort of unsettling bloodletting.

43. Santo and Blue Demon vs. Dracula and the Wolf Man (1973) (DVD) – If you’ve never seen a Mexican wrestling movie before, you need to put it on your “To Do” list ASAP. In this one, Santo (the masked wrestler) calls in his friend Blue Demon (also a masked wrestler) to help him save three women and a girl from the newly-revived Dracula and the Wolf Man. There’s a formula to these films (and they are legion): each film opens with a wrestling match, then there’s the film proper, and then it closes with a wrestling match. In this one, since it’s Santo AND Blue Demon, there’s a bonus wrestling match in the middle of the film when Blue Demon is added to the proceedings. In this bonus match, Blue Demon wrestles a maskless guy named Renato, the Hippie. And speaking of dumb names, in case you never knew it, the Wolf Man’s real name is Rufus Rex. Take that, Larry Talbot! It’s dumb fun that was pretty much made for kids, although it does have more blood and violence than I’m used to seeing in movies aimed at children. And it’s just weird having the two stars walking around in masks that make them look like burn victims, but I guess that it sold like hotcakes in Mexico fifty years ago.


10/14/2019

44. The Mummy's Curse (1944) (Blu-ray) – I watched this one for the Challenge in 2013, and since my feelings haven’t changed about it, here’s what I had to say about it six years ago: Fast-moving entry in the series (the last, in fact, if you don't count Abbott and Costello into the equation) is pretty much interchangeable with the other entries in the series. Luckily, The Mummy's Curse features TWO gorgeous brunettes as eye candy. The resurrection of Princess Ananka in this one is probably my favorite sequence out of the entire Universal horror cycle of the '40s (again, excepting Abbott and Costello). On the debit side, another lame song slows things to a crawl for two minutes or so. One of eight(!) films that Lon Jr. made in 1944.

45. The House That Screamed (1969) (Streaming—Google Drive [Alyxstarr's link]) – Murders take place at a boarding school for wayward girls, but who’s doing the killing? This Spanish film has a stellar reputation that I find rather unwarranted; in its favor, it does have some nice atmosphere and camera work, but to its detriment it moves very slowly and is actually too tame. I mean, where in the history of anywhere has the entire population of students at a school been forced to shower wearing clothes? I realize that I’m voicing a minority opinion, and maybe the film with grow on me with repeated viewings, but at the moment, I’m not a fan. I have a feeling that I might like the US theatrical edit better than the longer version that I watched for the Challenge.

46. Wes Craven's New Nightmare (1994) (Streaming—Google Drive [Alyxstarr's link]) – Another film that I watched for a previous Challenge; again, my feelings for it have stayed the same. Here's what I wrote about it four years ago: It’s ten years after A Nightmare on Elm Street, and, because the Freddy Krueger films are no longer being made, the spirit of Freddy is getting restless and needs an outlet back into our world. What better way back in than to start showing up in the dreams of the real people who created the movies: Heather Langenkamp, Wes Craven, and Robert Englund? At once silly and dizzyingly self-reflexive, New Nightmare is much like a cinematic Mobius strip that keeps turning in on itself. It’s sorta-kinda brilliant until it gives in to its own tropes with about twenty minutes left. Unfortunately, audiences didn’t want meta-Freddy, and the film fizzled at the box office. Craven tried going meta again two years later with much more profitable results.


10/15/2019

47. One Cut of the Dead (2017) (Blu-ray) – I watched One Cut of the Dead for the fifth time for the Challenge, and I think that I love it more every time that I watch it. I first saw it on July 5th of this year, and here's what I wrote about it then: "After hearing unanimous praise for this low-budget Japanese wonder (which cost roughly $25,000 and raked in more than $25 million at the global box office—and that’s without playing theatrically in the U.S.), I went online and bought a Region B Blu-ray of it from the UK. I’d tried to hear as few details about the plot as possible, but I was still a little apprehensive to put it in my player, fearing a) that the disc wouldn’t play (I’d read that the Region B disc was miscoded, and was actually an all-region disc, which is why I decided to spend the $27.79 in the first place), and b) that the movie wouldn’t live up to its hype. Well, the disc played, so that was one fear allayed. Once the film started, I couldn’t help but feel a little disappointed, because, while it did indeed seem to be shot in one take, the quality of the filmmaking, in particular the acting, camerawork, and special effects, wasn’t all that great. And then the film within the film ends, and the audience is told the backstory, and the film becomes wonderful beyond words. Is it a horror film? No. It’s a film about the making of a horror film, but there’s nothing actually horrific about it…and better yet, I wasn’t disappointed in the slightest. In fact, when it was over, I broke down in tears for no discernable reason. I guess that the sheer delight of filmmaking evidenced in the film, along with what actually turns out to be some great performances, hit me right in the feels. Whatever the reason, I enjoyed this film more than I’ve enjoyed a film in a long time, and I’m glad that I decided to splurge and buy it." I don't foresee anything besting One Cut of the Dead as my favorite new watch of 2019.

48. Snuff (1975) (DVD) – This sub-par crime film, mostly shot in Argentina, gained notoriety (and made some serious cash) when it was passed off as showing an actual on-camera murder. Anyone who’s ever seen a Herschell Gordon Lewis film would know that the on-screen “murder” is actually comprised of some pretty dodgy gore effects. Snuff is bad, and not even entertainingly so—it’s just bottom-of-the-barrel grindhouse fodder. It does have one memorable line, though: “Pig! Filthiest of all animals! I will cut your heart from your body and feed it to the dogs!”

49. Effects (1979) (DVD) – A crew shooting a low-budget horror movie soon come to realize that they’re working on a snuff film. A super-low budget and generally obnoxious characters sink this one pretty fast. Many of George Romero’s late ‘70s/early ‘80s crew worked on this, but George’s presence is sorely missed.


10/16/2019

50. Final Exam (1981) (Streaming—Amazon Prime)– A random guy shows up to kill students at a small college. And that’s it—really. A couple of obnoxious characters with fitting names (Wildman and Radish, which suddenly sounds to me like a show that should be on the Cartoon Network) are given waaaay too much screen time until the final girl kills the slasher real good with his own knife. This is probably the most boring and least suspenseful slasher film that I’ve ever seen; if you were to show this film right next to a bowl of melting vanilla ice cream, I probably wouldn’t be able to tell you which one was the slasher film. Shot at the Earl Owensby studios in North Carolina.

51. Better Watch Out (2016) (Streaming—Shudder via Amazon Prime)– A babysitter in charge of a 12-year-old boy on an evening right before Christmas finds the house she’s sitting at besieged by an unknown assailant or assailants. I went into this one knowing only that basic premise, and the film has turned out to be one of my favorites of the month so far. I don’t want to spoil any of its surprises, so I’ll just urge you to see it.

52. Cry_Wolf (2005) (DVD) – A prank email sent to the students of an elite boarding school turns out to have deadly consequences. This is really quite the twisty thriller, so there’s a better-than-average chance that if you’re not paying attention to all of the details, you’ll come away from it confused and unsatisfied. If you’re willing to pay close attention, however, it’s a fascinating film, even if it does feature Jon Bon Jovi in a key role. (Full disclosure: I’m not a fan of Jon Bon Jovi.)


10/17/2019

53. The Fury (1978) (DVD) – I first saw this film back around the time that it first came out (I think that I caught it on HBO, but I might have seen it in the theater), and I’ve always been a bit underwhelmed by it. Director Brian De Palma is in fine form, but something about the screenplay by John Farris (based on his novel) seems a little off. It’s still entertaining, with an early appearance by Daryl Hannah and a memorable finale.


10/18/2019

54. God Told Me To (1976) (DVD) – Oscar-winner Sandy Dennis shows up in her second subset pick of this year’s Challenge as the wife of New York City detective Tony Lo Bianco. He’s investigating a series of murders in which the killers all give “God told me to” as their reason for killing. As it turns out, he may also have a connection to the murders. Pretty good Larry Cohen film features one of the grooviest couches in cinematic history, and Andy Kaufman shows up as one of the killers.

55. Uncle Sam (1995) (Streaming—Amazon Prime)– A kid’s uncle, killed by friendly fire in the Gulf War, is sent home for burial. Unfortunately for everyone involved, he decides not to stay dead. Isaac Hayes, P. J. Soles, Bo Hopkins, and William Smith help to keep things interesting between the killings. It’s a long, long way from Bob Clark’s Deathdream, but it’s not totally awful, either.

56. It's Alive III: Island of the Alive (1987) (DVD) – I’m not a fan of Larry Cohen’s It’s Alive, since I have a hard time suspending my disbelief far enough to allow me to take killer mutant babies in stride. I’m not fond of It Lives Again, the sequel, in which three killer mutant babies show up to continue the bloodletting. Oddly enough, I really kinda dug It’s Alive III: Island of the Alive, because, with the babies grown up a little, I can finally suspend my disbelief enough to meet Cohen halfway. Killer mutant children are SO much more believable than killer mutant babies. I was a bit disappointed that so little of the film actually took place on the island where the killer mutant babies had been abandoned, but Michael Moriarty’s performance more than makes up for that misstep.


10/19/2019

57. The Prey (1983) (Streaming—Google Drive [Alyxstarr's link]) – Bizarro slasher film-cum-nature documentary has practically nothing to recommend it…unless you like watching insect footage that’s been overdubbed with idiotic sound effects. If that’s the case, you’re in for a real treat. The ending is ultra-dumb and somehow reminded me a bit of Eegah! That should be enough to steer any rational person away from this swill.

58. Full Moon High (1981) (Streaming—YouTube)– I don’t know what was going on with genre comedies in the early ‘80s, but the majority of them were awful. This one is no exception. Adam Arkin goes to Romania with his dad Ed McMahon and returns as a werewolf. Twenty years later, he has to fulfill his destiny…by scoring a touchdown against Full Moon High School’s rival. Larry Cohen was responsible for this hairball. If you absolutely have to watch a high school werewolf film, watch Teen Wolf or I Was a Teenage Werewolf instead.

59. The Curse of the Crimson Altar (a.k.a. The Crimson Cult) (1968) (Blu-ray) – The very definition of “meh.” A guy’s brother disappears while on an antique-buying trip, so he goes looking for him, with only an address as a clue. He winds up finding Barbara Steele in green makeup. Boris Karloff and Christopher Lee star.


10/20/2019

60. Viy (1967) (Streaming—Shudder via Amazon Prime)– A seminary student in Russia, traveling with two friends during a break from their studies, ends up spending the night with his friends on the farm of a witch with whom he later finds himself flying in the night skies. When he gets back to the seminary, he’s immediately sent off to say prayers at the deathbed of a young woman who asked for him by name. By the time he gets to her, however, she’s already died, so he’s pressed into staying in a church with her corpse for three nights to offer up prayers. Bad move. Each night the dead girl leaves her coffin and terrorizes the student until dawn, with each subsequent night being more horrifying than the last. On the third night, all hell breaks loose in the church, with all sorts of demons and devils, and ghoulies and ghosties and long-leggedy beasties, threatening him. The copy of the film that I saw was dubbed, and I probably would have preferred a subtitled version, but it still packed quite a punch in the church scenes and had some truly nightmarish imagery. It’s definitely a change of pace from the usual.

61. Valerie and Her Week of Wonders (1970) (DVD) – Thirteen-year-old Valerie hits puberty and all sorts of weirdness breaks loose. A lot of people seem to like this film, but its non-linear plot (if it can be said to have a plot at all) kept me from enjoying it much. I found it to be pretty, but confusing and fairly non-eventful. Your mileage may vary, but I don’t think that I’ll be rewatching it any time soon.

62. Billy the Kid vs. Dracula (1966) (DVD) – Movie titles rarely get this self-explanatory. Dracula goes up against a reformed Billy the Kid. You can probably guess who survives ‘til the end of the film. This movie often gets derided, but for a low-budget affair aimed strictly at kiddie matinees, it supplies exactly what it promises: some western action and some vampire action. I enjoyed it for what it was.

63. Vampyr (1932) (DVD) – Carl Theodor Dreyer’s follow-up to The Passion of Joan of Arc is a fairly slow-moving tale about an old woman vampire. A lot of people seem to find this to be a horror classic, but I found it to be a film with some interesting imagery but not a whole lot else going for it. It’s worth seeing, but don’t expect to have your socks knocked off.

64. Vampyr (1932) (With Commentary) (DVD) – Try as he might, film scholar Tony Rayns fails at convincing me that the sloppiness of Vampyr’s narrative was an intentional act on director Carl Theodor Dreyer’s part. For a fun drinking game, take a shot whenever Rayns says the word “disjunction.”

65. Slaughter of the Vampires (1964) (DVD) – A vampire living in the basement of a couple’s castle comes up for some snacks. This good-looking vampire film fits right in with the films that Barbara Steele was making in Italy around the same time, although it’s not terribly memorable in any way. I am rather partial to one of its alternate titles, however: Curse of the Blood-Ghouls. Now that’s a title to be reckoned with.

66. The Return of Dracula (1958) (DVD) – Dracula kills a poor artist who’s about to go live with relatives in America and assumes his identity, causing complications for said relatives. The film bears more than a passing resemblance to Alfred Hitchcock’s Shadow of a Doubt, but with more bloodsucking (naturally). The brief color insert at the end is rather unexpected, but it’s a nice touch.


10/21/2019

67. A Nightmare on Elm Street 4: The Dream Master (1988) (Streaming—Google Drive [Alyxstarr's link]) – Freddie Krueger’s back and up to his same old tricks. And as if one twisted nursery rhyme (“One, two, Freddie’s coming for you…”) wasn’t enough, this one stirs yet another idiotic one into the mix. It’s blatantly obvious that New Line had no idea where the series was headed by this point, but since the films were making money, New Line kept cranking them out, quality be damned. Honestly--did we really think that this was frightening, back when it first came out?

68. Hatchet (2006) (DVD) – I first watched Hatchet for the 2013 OHMC, and I loved it. Here’s what I wrote about it then: “I enjoyed Hatchet a bunch. While it doesn't break new ground, Hatchet exemplifies Roger Ebert's quote about what makes a good movie: ‘It's not what a movie is about, it's how it is about it.’ Hatchet goes about it with a great and game cast, some really funny lines, and a handful of terrific jump-scares. Highly recommended.” I still love it, perhaps even more than I did six years ago. And what an ending!

69. Troll (1986) (Streaming—Amazon Prime)– Terminally weird film has a family moving into a new apartment and running afoul of a troll (as in the mythical creature, not that snarky guy who lives in his parents’ basement) that lurks in the building. Because this is a Charles Band production, I am genetically predisposed to dislike it, but it’s just too strange to dismiss easily. Watch for the scene wherein the troll, who’s taken the form of the family’s young daughter, goes on a hamburger rampage.


10/22/2019

70. Audition (1999) (Blu-ray) – I first saw Audition on the Sundance Channel back when it first hit cable. I hadn’t heard much about it except that it was scary. So I watched it, and I found myself disliking it more and more as it wore on. By the end of the film, I really, really hated it. In fact, I hated it so much that I decided that I would tell my best friend that he just had to see it and make him watch it, just to see how much he would hate it as well. I knew that this subterfuge would work because we have extraordinarily similar tastes in film. As I had recorded it on tape, I took it over to his house the following evening and we watched it together. At about the 90-minute mark in the movie, he pressed the “stop” button on the remote, got up, and took the tape out of the VCR. When I asked him what was going on, he said that he didn’t like it and he didn’t want to finish watching it. I was rather dumbfounded, as I’d never seen any film get the better of him. So, after much cajoling and calling him names, I got him to put the tape back in and finish the movie. Once it was over, he said that he’d never had a film unnerve him like that one did, and that it must be a great film because it pushed buttons that he didn’t know that he had. This second viewing for me, on the other hand, changed my view of the film entirely—I suddenly “got” it, and I thought that it was phenomenal. I’ve found that this often happens with Miike’s films—I hate or at least dislike them on first viewing and come to love them on the second viewing. (SIDE NOTE: I told this story to a co-worker a couple of years later, and he told me that he and his wife had rented the DVD and had a similar experience in hating the film. It creeped them out so badly that he didn’t even want the DVD in the house, so he ended up throwing it in the freezer until he could take it back to Blockbuster.) Every time that I see Audition, I find new meanings in it; it’s a densely-layered film that I’ve come to see as a nearly-perfect horror film and one of the best films, horror or otherwise, of the past twenty-five years.

71. Wrong Turn (2003) (Blu-ray) – I saw Wrong Turn years ago and wasn’t particularly impressed by it. This viewing made me think that I judged it a bit too harshly the first time out, as I rather enjoyed this tale of some twenty-somethings who get tangled up with a family of inbred mountain folk.


10/23/2019

72. Us (2019) (Blu-ray) – I believe that Jordan Peele, director of Us, is a very good director. He’s so good, in fact, that his directorial sleight-of-hand kept me from noticing all the huge, gaping holes in the plot of this film the first time that I saw it. It was only when I was thinking about the movie later that I realized that many of the plot points didn’t line up. I am terribly enamored, however, of the score of the film. I would be perfectly happy if its composer, Michael Abels, were allowed to score every new movie from now on. (I also think that Peele’s use of Minnie Ripperton’s “Les Fleurs” to end the film was a stroke of genius.) I feel that all of the performances in Us are great, but perhaps Peele should give some consideration to having a co-writer on future projects.

73. Ils (Them) (2006) (DVD) – For all of this film’s accolades, I really didn’t enjoy it. The plot and the actors were fine, but the hand-held camera footage and insufficient lighting were beyond annoying. I didn’t mind it so much in The Blair Witch Project because there was a reason for it, but here it’s just used for effect, and it really, really aggravated me. I doubt that I’ll ever watch this one again.


10/24/2019

74. Nina Forever (2015) (Streaming—Amazon Prime)– I hadn’t heard of this film before this year’s Challenge, so I went into it knowing nothing about it except for Google’s synopsis: “After his girlfriend Nina dies, Rob falls in love with Holly. The new relationship faces a huge challenge when Nina comes back to life to sarcastically taunt the couple whenever they try to have sex.” That summary didn’t exactly fill me with confidence that the movie was going to be any good, but I found the film to be a quirky yet rather touching metaphor for how we deal with grief. I have a feeling that I’ll be revisiting this one in the near future.

75. Alien Raiders (2008) (DVD) – As a supermarket is closing for the night, it’s taken over by what appear to be terrorists…but they’re actually there to try to put a stop to a global takeover by extraterrestrial critters who hide inside people. Yeah, it’s not the most original of ideas, but I found Alien Raiders to be exciting and well-made, especially for a film that went straight to video. Color me pleasantly surprised.


10/25/2019

76. Society (1989) (Streaming—Amazon Prime)– Society is a one-joke film, but it’s rather a good joke. A kid starts to have suspicions that his family and a lot of the other “upper crust” folks in town aren’t really who they seem to be. It turns out that he’s right. The special makeup effects for this film, created by Screaming Mad George, are waaaaay out there, but Devin DeVasquez is the reason that I’ll be revisiting it. To quote Martin Landau playing Bela Lugosi in Ed Wood, “She’s a honey!”

77. Warlock Moon (1973) (Streaming—Shout Factory TV)– I love, love, love the atmosphere of this movie. It has a mid-‘70s, shot-by-nonprofessionals feel to it that reminds me of other favorite off-Hollywood films from that era such as Bloodstalkers, The House of Seven Corpses, and Messiah of Evil. In it, a couple on a date stumble upon an old, seemingly abandoned spa that had been popular a hundred years ago. There’s an old woman who has taken up residence in one of the guest cottages, but something seems amiss about her. I feel that this is one of those movies that I like that most other people won’t, but that’s okay with me. It’s sort of like a cross between Carnival of Souls and House of the Devil. If you prefer mood over action, you should give it a shot.

78. American Scary (2006) (DVD) – This documentary about horror movie hosts covers the topic fairly exhaustively, although it couldn’t possibly highlight every horror movie host ever. (I’ll admit to being a little disappointed that Sivad from Memphis had only a few seconds of footage, and Scarticia from Jackson, MS wasn’t mentioned at all—they were my local hosts back in the ‘70s.) The film does have some great interviews with Maila Nurmi (a.k.a. Vampira), John Zacherle (a.k.a. Zacherley, the “cool ghoul”), and Ernie Anderson (a.k.a. Ghoulardi), among others. The modern horror hosts aren’t nearly as compelling, however, with Joseph Fotinos (a.k.a. Professor Anton Griffin) being particularly irritating.

79. Freaks (1932) (DVD) – This classic film from Tod Browning still has the power to unsettle an audience. In it, a beautiful trapeze artist finds out that one of the little people in the circus where she performs is wealthy, so she pretends to love him while she plots to marry him and take all his money to share with her lover, the circus strong man. When the sideshow “freaks” discover her duplicity, they exact a horrifying revenge. Most of the circus freaks in the movie were actual sideshow performers, which lends an authenticity to the film that couldn’t have been achieved by any other means at the time that it was made. For me, the creepiest moment involves Violet and Daisy Hilton, the conjoined twins in the cast; as one is getting kissed, the other gets a rapturous look on her face. I’m amazed that MGM, the most glamourous of the Hollywood studios and the one least involved with horror films, decided that making Freaks would be a good corporate move. It was banned in England until the 1960s.


10/26/2019

80. The Haunting of Seacliff Inn (1994) (Streaming—YouTube)– Ally Sheedy and William R. Moses star as a couple who decide to give up their high-paying jobs to become bed-and-breakfast owners. It turns out to be a bad decision, as the house that they end up renovating has some problems, the least of which are structural. If the Hallmark Channel made horror films, this is what one of them would look like. It’s mildly spooky at best.

81. Death Spa (1989) (Streaming—Amazon Prime)– A fitness club where no one actually seems to do any exercising is plagued by a series of gruesome, if somewhat illogical, deaths. Judging from the choreography involved, that HAD to have been an advanced aerobics class, right? I understand that there are those who find this film to be a lot of fun; I am not one of them.

82. Nightmare in Blood (1977) (DVD) – John Stanley, a San Francisco Bay Area TV horror host, co-wrote and co-directed this super low-budget vampire tale set at a horror convention. It’s got a weird, proselytizing aspect to it; a big chunk of its running time is devoted to arguing that horror movies aren’t bad for you. It also has a very irritating film nerd aspect to it as well—very early in the film, one of the characters mentions Frankenstein, and another pops off, “The original Frankenstein, Universal, 1931, starring Boris Karloff.” I bet that he doesn’t get invited to many parties. The film’s not the worst that I’ve seen this month, but it’s not one that I plan on ever watching again, either.

83. The Roost (2005) (DVD) – This first feature from Ti West (House of the Devil, The Innkeepers) about bats in a barn that carry a zombie-type virus shows some promise, but he hadn’t quite yet figured out how to make a slow burn work. And although I love me some Tom Noonan, his segments as a TV horror host fall flat and only serve to eat up the film’s already brief running time. Still, it’s fun to see an early work by one of my favorite current directors. I'm ready for West to make another horror film.


10/27/2019

84. The Seventh Curse (1986) (Streaming—Amazon Prime)– Absolutely bonkers Category III film from Hong Kong has Chow Yun Fat in the supporting role of “Wesley.” A doctor, in Thailand to try to gather botanicals from which to fashion a cure for AIDS, saves a woman from becoming a human sacrifice and gets a curse put on him for the effort. He returns home, but to keep the curse from killing him he has to return to Thailand to fight the sorcerer who cursed him in the first place. Along the way he encounters a living skeleton with glowing blue eyes, a flying monster baby, and all sorts of less fantastic danger. It’s a lot of fun if you’re in the right frame of mind.

85. The Invitation (2015) (Streaming—Netflix)– A guy named Will and his girlfriend are invited to a dinner party hosted by his ex-wife Eden (from whom he hasn’t heard in two years) and her new husband. Once they get to the house that Will used to share with Eden, Will finds that many of his and Eden’s old friends are there as well. As the evening progresses, Will begins to sense that something’s not quite right…and that there may be another, darker reason for the dinner party other than to have a reunion. I really enjoyed this film, and I didn’t anticipate where it might be headed until a few moments before it actually got there. The feeling of paranoia in the film is palpable, and it makes for an exquisitely squirmy viewing experience.

86. The Midnight Meat Train (2008) (Blu-ray) – This pretty good adaptation of one of Clive Barker’s short stories from the Books of Blood stars Bradley Cooper as a photographer who discovers the titular vehicle while shooting random photos one night. The film becomes more predictable as it goes on, but other than having some dodgy CGI gore effects and a cliched ending, it’s well-made and generates a fair amount of tension.

87. Murder in the Blue Room (1944) (Streaming—YouTube)– Over the past few years, I’ve discovered that I have a fondness for films from the 1940s that combine humor, horror, and music. Earlier this month I watched Zombies on Broadway and enjoyed it; last year I watched You’ll Find Out and really loved it; and now I’ve seen Murder in the Blue Room and enjoyed it, too. It’s probably my least favorite of the three, but it’s still fun. In it, a girl’s father was killed in the Blue Room of the family mansion. The mansion was abandoned for twenty years and reputed to be haunted by his ghost, but now she, her mother, and her stepfather have moved back in. When another murder happens in the Blue Room, everyone at the house starts trying to figure out who’s doing the killing. That’s the horror angle; the music and humor are supplied by three of her friends, an Andrews Sisters knock-off act called the Three JazzyBelles. It’s fun if you can shut off your brain and your expectations for an hour.

88. Weird Woman (1944) (DVD) – Lon Chaney, Jr. stars as a college professor who’s married to a woman who, unbeknownst to him, is practicing witchcraft to advance his academic career. Based on the novel Conjure Wife by Fritz Leiber, it’s one of the Inner Sanctum films released by Universal in the ‘40s. I enjoyed it a lot.


10/28/2019

89. The Vault of Horror (1973) (DVD) – A sequel of sorts to Amicus’s Tales from the Crypt, Vault of Horror gives us five more tales that originally appeared in EC comics in the 1950s. This go-round, the stories aren’t nearly as strong as the ones in Tales from the Crypt, but they’re still fun.

90. Maniac (2012) (DVD) – This needless remake of the similarly needless original film from 1980 stars Elijah Wood as a guy who restores old mannequins when he’s not stalking and scalping women. As far as I’m concerned, this film has no reason to exist—avoid it.

91. Spirits of the Dead (1968) (16mm film print) – An anthology film directed by some of Europe’s biggest art-house directors of the ‘60s, Spirits of the Dead features adaptations of three of Edgar Allan Poe’s stories with varying results. The first segment, directed by Jane Fonda’s then-husband Roger Vadim, is based on “Metzengerstein,” and features Jane and Peter Fonda as cousins. In it, Jane gets to wear some funky outfits and falls in love with a horse who may or may not be possessed by the spirit of Peter. The second segment, “William Wilson,” directed by Louis Malle, concerns a guy with a doppelganger, but most of the segment’s running time is taken up by a two-player poker game. Both of these first two segments are just short of awful, but the film redeems itself admirably with the final segment, “Toby Dammit.” In it, Terence Stamp plays a washed-up alcoholic actor who arrives in Rome to make a movie and ends up speeding around the countryside in the sports car that he was given as an incentive to make the film. Along the way, he keeps seeing a creepy little blonde-haired girl with a white ball, whom he seems to think is the Devil. This segment, directed by Federico Fellini, is simply amazing. It’s a high point both for Fellini and for the genre, and it shouldn’t be missed.


10/29/2019

92. Behind the Walls (2018) (Streaming—Amazon Prime)– This steaming pile of tripe should have been called Close-ups of Random Objects, since that’s what the film seems to want to show more than anything else. A mother and her three kids move into a house where something seems to be living in the walls. Subplots are brought up and dropped at an alarming pace—but that’s okay, as none of this gels into anything resembling an actual movie anyway. This may very well end up being the least-competently-made film that I see this year.

93. Tigers Are Not Afraid (2017) (Streaming—Shudder via Amazon Prime)– I loved this unusual film about children orphaned by the Mexican drug wars and how they band together to survive. Highly, highly recommended.

94. Stuck (2007) (Blu-ray) – Based on a true story, Stuck stars Mena Suvari as a nursing home aide who hits a guy with her car. Unfortunately, she hits him with such force that he becomes stuck in her car windshield, with his upper body inside the car and his lower body on the hood. To make matters worse, he’s not dead. Utterly freaked out, she leaves her car in her garage, hoping that he’ll die. When he isn’t dead the next morning, she has to figure out how to handle this awkward situation. Mena sports the worst hairstyle of her career. The last feature directed by Stuart (Re-Animator) Gordon to date, Stuck is probably my favorite new-to-me film of the month.

95. The Apparition (2012) (Blu-ray) – Some smarty-pants academics try to conjure an entity via a supercharged version of a séance. They succeed, but they don’t know how to send it back to its home dimension. Bored, it decides to follow one of them to his house and mess up his home life. Said academic’s wife is not amused. Completely forgettable.


10/30/2019

96. Mausoleum (1983) (Streaming—Amazon Prime)– Bobbie Bresee plays a woman who’s possessed by a demon. She really should have expected this, since her family name is Nomed. Marjoe Gortner makes another in a long line of career mistakes by co-starring in this claptrap. LaWanda Page as Elsie the maid easily steals the film; she has all the best lines, including this gem: “It’s some strange shit going on in this house, and I know damn well it is!” Don’t watch this for scares; watch it because of its ineptitude. And can someone please explain to me why “mausoleum” doesn’t rhyme with “linoleum”?

97. Death Bed: The Bed That Eats (1977) (Streaming—Amazon Prime)– I can’t figure out any plausible reason that would explain why this film exists. It’s not scary, it’s not funny, it’s just strange. In it, a bed in an abandoned house eats various people who happen to lie down on it. In that respect, it’s not that dissimilar to a Venus fly trap plant. There’s also a guy who lives in a painting that’s hanging in the room where the bed is, and he comments on things that are happening. My favorite line: “The place looks clean for being abandoned so long…I hope there’s not a maniac around.” If you love oddball cinema, you really should check this out, just to say that you’ve seen it.

98. Strange Confession (1945) (DVD) – It’s another Inner Sanctum mystery from Universal starring Lon Chaney, Jr.! In this one, Lon is a chemist who works for a drug manufacturer who takes credit for every drug that Lon creates. Lon gets upset with him and quits, but after a New Year’s Eve visit from his former boss, Lon goes back to work for him. During his visit, the boss meets Lon’s wife and becomes smitten with her, so he sends Lon off to the jungles of South America to finish working on his new drug Zymurgine while he swoops in to try to steal away Lon’s wife. And that’s not even half the plot of this 62-minute film! Man, but I love these Inner Sanctum mysteries!


10/31/2019: Halloween

99. The Return (2006) (DVD) – Sarah Michelle Gellar stars as an account manager for a trucking company who travels to Texas to meet with a client. While there, she starts having visions of a town she’s never visited. She stumbles across a photograph of one of the buildings she saw in a vision, so she goes to the town to check it out. She soon finds herself involved in trying to solve a fifteen-year-old murder. The Return isn’t bad, but it seemed rather needlessly complicated to me; it reminded me of what Dead Again might have been like if the entire film had been in color. I found it to be marginally enjoyable, but not necessary viewing.

100. House of 1000 Corpses (2003) (Streaming—Amazon Prime)– Oh, Rob Zombie, you try so hard. As my reactions to Rob Zombie’s films generally range from strong dislike to out-and-out hatred, I wasn’t expecting to like this one much. It surprised me, then, that I found myself enjoying it relatively well…until about the midway point, when it stopped making any sense whatsoever. I’m amazed at the great cast he was able to pull together for this, though.


11/1/2019

Note: This film is not counted in my totals, as it was watched outside the actual month of October. I consider it to be a sort of post-Challenge footnote.

XX Return to Horror High (1987) (Streaming—Amazon Prime) – I think that I smiled twice during this unfunny “horror comedy.” In it, a movie crew is shooting a movie about some murders that took place at a high school a few years before…in the very high school where the murders took place. Unfortunately, the act of filming at the now-abandoned high school causes whoever did the original killings to start killing again. It’s impossible to figure out at any given point whether the murders that we’re seeing are re-enactments for the film that they’re shooting, or if they involve the cast and crew shooting the film. And then the very end of the film throws the audience another curveball, and the whole thing collapses in upon itself like a bad souffle. This marked my second time to watch this film; I hope that there’s never a third.



Theme Nights -- Completed!


31 Films Subset -- Completed!


The Checklist -- Completed!

JAX036

JAX036's October Horror Challenge 2019

Bonus Day - September (Friday the 13th):
1. Friday the 13th (2009) 4/10 - I remember enjoying this a lot more on previous viewings, but was annoyed at most of the characters on this rewatch. I still enjoyed most of Jason's kills in this one.

September 30th:
2. Carnival of Souls (1962) 5/10 - I enjoyed the facial expression range of lead actress Candace Hilligoss but this movie is not horror enough for me. Found the ending highly predictable too.

October 1st:
3. Pet Semetary (2019) 5/10 - I am a big fan of Stephen King's books. I can't put my finger on it but something about this movie didn't sit right with me. I have yet to watch the original, so hopefully that delivers.

October 2nd:
4. [REC]3 Genesis (2012) 4/10 - Was expecting something a lot closer to the first [REC] movie. Didn't mind the change of direction but was disappointed with the predictability of the storyline and will not be rushing to watch this one again.

October 3rd:
5. Death Note (2017) 6/10 - Enjoyed the soundtrack on this one and there were some interesting visuals. I'm not familiar with the anime/comic it is based on and may need to check them out for comparison.
6. The Omen (1976) 6/10 - First time viewing and I'm disappointed. Was expecting much more. Should have watched sooner.
7. Cat's Eye (1985) /10 - More Stephen King. I found the short stories more intense than what was delivered here.

October 4th:
8.

shadokitty

EdTheRipper

The Past... 2006 - 170 2007 - 168 2009 - 198 2010 - 102 2011 - 163 2012 - 139 2013 - 158 2014 - 100 2015 - 96 2016 - 38 2017 - 48 2018 - 60 2019 - 40 Thanks to CHAD for the table inspiration

September 30th
1. Us (BD)

October 1st
2. The Possession of Hannah Grace
3. Crawl

October 2nd
4. Pet Sematary (2019)

October 3rd
5. The Banana Splits Movie (BD)

October 7th
6.Overlord (BD)

October 8th
7. Rust Creek
8. Greta (BD)
9. Clovehitch Killer
10. Cabin Fever (2016)

October 9th
11. Motel Hell (BD)
12. Mandy (BD)
13. Escape Room (BD)

October 11th
14. Ghost Stories
15. I'll Take Your Dead
16. Feral

October 13th
17. Devil's Gate
18. The Resurrected (BD)
19. Dark Summer

October 14th
20.Kolobos (BD)
21. The Mutilator (BD)
22. Mermaid: Lake of the Dead

October 15th
23. 3 From Hell
24. The Final Wish

October 17th
25. Suspiria (2018) (BD)

October 18th
26. Scared Stiff (BD)

October 20th
27. The Last Horror Movie

October 21st
28. Abandoned (BD)

October 22nd
29. Elizabeth Harvest

October 24th
30. The Slayer (BD)

October 25th
31. Scalpel (BD)

October 26th
32. Deadly Blessing (BD)
33. Grim
34. Killer Tongue

October 27th
35. Seconds Apart
36. Destroyer (1988) (BD)

October 29th
37. Edge of Sanity (BD)
38. Eli

October 31st
39. Blood and Lace (BD)
40. Deep Blue Sea 2





LIST COMPLETE

BobO'Link

15th Annual
October Horror Movie Challenge

List FINAL
10th year participating!
65 First time viewings

☼ - First time viewing
▲▲▲▲▲▲▲▲▲▲ - Rating on a 1 to 10 scale


Bonus day - Friday the 13th w/Full moon
September 13th
1. The Wolf Man (1941) ▲▲▲▲▲▲▲▲▲▲
2. Werewolves on Wheels (1971) ▲▲▲▲▲▲▲▲▲▲☼
3. Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man (1943) ▲▲▲▲▲▲▲▲▲▲
4. House of Frankenstein (1944) ▲▲▲▲▲▲▲▲▲▲
5. House of Dracula (1945) ▲▲▲▲▲▲▲▲▲▲

September 30th
6. The Crater Lake Monster (1977) ▲▲▲▲▲▲▲▲▲▲☼
7. Land of the Minotaur (1976) ▲▲▲▲▲▲▲▲▲▲☼

October 1st
8. Fleshburn (1984) ▲▲▲▲▲▲▲▲▲▲
9. Escape from Hell Island (1963) ▲▲▲▲▲▲▲▲▲▲☼

October 2nd
10. The Hearse (1980) ▲▲▲▲▲▲▲▲▲▲
11. Bloodlust! (1961) ▲▲▲▲▲▲▲▲▲▲

October 3rd
12. Horror High (1973) ▲▲▲▲▲▲▲▲▲▲
13. The Creeping Terror (1964) ▲▲▲▲▲▲▲▲▲▲

October 4th
14. The Teacher (1974) ▲▲▲▲▲▲▲▲▲▲☼
15. The Babysitter (1969) ▲▲▲▲▲▲▲▲▲▲☼
16. Lurkers (1988) ▲▲▲▲▲▲▲▲▲▲☼
17. Carnival of Crime (1962) ▲▲▲▲▲▲▲▲▲☼

October 5th
18. Ghost Ship (2002) ▲▲▲▲▲▲▲▲▲▲☼
19. The Ring (2002) ▲▲▲▲▲▲▲▲▲▲☼
20. Jeepers Creepers (2001) ▲▲▲▲▲▲▲▲▲▲
21. Jeepers Creepers 2 (2003) ▲▲▲▲▲▲▲▲▲▲
22. Le pacte des loups (Brotherhood of the Wolf) (2001) ▲▲▲▲▲▲▲▲▲▲☼
23. Get Out (2017) ▲▲▲▲▲▲▲▲▲▲☼
24. The Mummy (1932) ▲▲▲▲▲▲▲▲▲▲

October 6th
25. Frankenstein Meets the Space Monster (1965) ▲▲▲▲▲▲▲▲▲▲☼
26. Constantine (2005) ▲▲▲▲▲▲▲▲▲▲
27. Dream No Evil (1970) ▲▲▲▲▲▲▲▲▲▲☼
28. Cry of the Bewitched (1957) ▲▲▲▲▲▲▲▲▲▲☼
29. The Quatermass Xperiment (aka The Creeping Unknown) (1955) ▲▲▲▲▲▲▲▲▲▲
30. Thriller (1960): S1E31/S1E32 ▲▲▲▲▲▲▲▲▲▲☼
31. Thriller (1960): S1E33/S1E34 ▲▲▲▲▲▲▲▲▲▲☼

October 7th
32. Thriller (1960): S1E35/S1E36 ▲▲▲▲▲▲▲▲▲▲☼
33. 20 Million Miles to Earth (1957) ▲▲▲▲▲▲▲▲▲▲

October 8th
34. Thriller (1960): S1E37/S2E1 ▲▲▲▲▲▲▲▲▲▲☼
35. Vampire Hookers (1978) ▲▲▲▲▲▲▲▲▲▲☼

October 9th
36. Saturn 3 (1980) ▲▲▲▲▲▲▲▲▲▲
37. The Void (2016) ▲▲▲▲▲▲▲▲▲▲☼
38. Army of Darkness (1992) ▲▲▲▲▲▲▲▲▲▲

October 10th
39. Annihilation (2018) ▲▲▲▲▲▲▲▲▲▲☼
40. Slither (2006) ▲▲▲▲▲▲▲▲▲▲
41. Grandma Werewolf (2017) ▲▲▲▲▲▲▲▲▲▲☼

October 11th
42. Dog Soldiers (2002) ▲▲▲▲▲▲▲▲▲▲☼
43. Hands of the Ripper (1971) ▲▲▲▲▲▲▲▲▲▲☼


October 12th
44. Stranger Things (2016): S1E1/S1E2 ▲▲▲▲▲▲▲▲▲▲☼
45. Stranger Things (2016): S1E3/S1E4 ▲▲▲▲▲▲▲▲▲▲☼
46. Stranger Things (2016): S1E5/S1E6 ▲▲▲▲▲▲▲▲▲▲☼
47. Stranger Things (2016): S1E6/S1E8 ▲▲▲▲▲▲▲▲▲▲☼

October 13th
48. The Man Who Laughs (1928) ▲▲▲▲▲▲▲▲▲▲☼
49. The Penalty (1920) ▲▲▲▲▲▲▲▲▲▲☼
50. The Phantom of the Opera (1925) ▲▲▲▲▲▲▲▲▲▲
51. Tremors (1990) ▲▲▲▲▲▲▲▲▲▲
52. Tremors II: Aftershocks (1996) ▲▲▲▲▲▲▲▲▲▲

October 14th
53. I Am Legend (2007) ▲▲▲▲▲▲▲▲▲▲
54. Weresquito: Nazi Hunter (2016) ▲▲▲▲▲▲▲▲▲▲☼

October 15th
55. Dead of Night (1945) ▲▲▲▲▲▲▲▲▲▲☼
56. Tremors 3: Back to Perfection (2001) ▲▲▲▲▲▲▲▲▲▲

October 16th
57. Varan the Unbelievable (1962) ▲▲▲▲▲▲▲▲▲▲
58. Tremors 4: The Legend Begins (2004) ▲▲▲▲▲▲▲▲▲▲
59. The Uninvited (1944) ▲▲▲▲▲▲▲▲▲▲

October 17th
60. Thriller (1960): S1E2/S2E3 ▲▲▲▲▲▲▲▲▲▲☼
61. Thriller (1960): S1E4/S2E5 ▲▲▲▲▲▲▲▲▲▲☼
62. Countess Dracula (1971) ▲▲▲▲▲▲▲▲▲▲
63. Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1920) ▲▲▲▲▲▲▲▲▲▲
64. Tremors: A Cold Day in Hell (2018) ▲▲▲▲▲▲▲▲▲▲☼
65. BloodRayne: The Third Reich (2011) ▲▲▲▲▲▲▲▲▲▲☼
66. Stop Me Before I Kill! (1960) ▲▲▲▲▲▲▲▲▲▲☼

October 18th
67. Cash on Demand (1962) ▲▲▲▲▲▲▲▲▲▲☼
68. The Snorkel (1958) ▲▲▲▲▲▲▲▲▲▲☼
69. Maniac (1963) ▲▲▲▲▲▲▲▲▲▲☼
70. Never Take Sweets from a Stranger (1960) ▲▲▲▲▲▲▲▲▲▲☼
71. These Are the Damned (1962) ▲▲▲▲▲▲▲▲▲▲☼
72. Resident Evil: The Final Chapter (2016) ▲▲▲▲▲▲▲▲▲▲☼
73. Psycho (1960) ▲▲▲▲▲▲▲▲▲▲

October 19th
74. Thriller (1960): S1E6/S2E7 ▲▲▲▲▲▲▲▲▲▲☼
75. Thriller (1960): S1E8/S2E9 ▲▲▲▲▲▲▲▲▲▲☼
76. Moontrap (1989) ▲▲▲▲▲▲▲▲▲▲☼

October 20th
77. Thriller (1960): S1E10/S2E11 ▲▲▲▲▲▲▲▲▲▲☼
78. Psycho II (1983) ▲▲▲▲▲▲▲▲▲▲☼
79. Thriller (1960): S1E12/S2E13 ▲▲▲▲▲▲▲▲▲▲☼

October 21st
80. Thriller (1960): S1E14/S2E15 ▲▲▲▲▲▲▲▲▲▲☼
81. Thriller (1960): S1E16/S2E17 ▲▲▲▲▲▲▲▲▲▲☼

October 22nd
82. Thriller (1960): S1E18/S2E19 ▲▲▲▲▲▲▲▲▲▲☼
83. Thriller (1960): S1E20/S2E21 ▲▲▲▲▲▲▲▲▲▲☼

October 23rd
84. Thriller (1960): S1E22/S2E23 ▲▲▲▲▲▲▲▲▲▲☼
85. Thriller (1960): S1E24/S2E25 ▲▲▲▲▲▲▲▲▲▲☼

October 24th
86. Monster House (2006) cc
87. Psycho III (1986) ▲▲▲▲▲▲▲▲▲▲☼
88. Thriller (1960): S1E26/S2E27 ▲▲▲▲▲▲▲▲▲▲☼
89. Thriller (1960): S1E28/S2E29 ▲▲▲▲▲▲▲▲▲▲☼

October 25th
90. The Wicker Man (2006) ▲▲▲▲▲▲▲▲▲▲☼
91. Virgin Witch (1972) ▲▲▲▲▲▲▲▲▲▲☼

October 26th
92. Cooties (2014) ▲▲▲▲▲▲▲▲▲▲
93. Psycho IV: The Beginning (1990) ▲▲▲▲▲▲▲▲▲▲☼
94. The Grudge (2004) ▲▲▲▲▲▲▲▲▲▲☼
95. Blade (1998) ▲▲▲▲▲▲▲▲▲▲
96. Blade II (2002) ▲▲▲▲▲▲▲▲▲▲

October 27th
97. Quatermass 2 (1957) ▲▲▲▲▲▲▲▲▲▲
98. John Dies at the End (2012) ▲▲▲▲▲▲▲▲▲▲☼

October 28th
99. Arachnophobia (1990) ▲▲▲▲▲▲▲▲▲▲

October 29th
100. The Awakening (2011) ▲▲▲▲▲▲▲▲▲▲☼

October 30th

October 31st

Indy24LA

Indy's 2018 Halloween/Horror Challenge
Indy's 2017 Halloween/Horror Challenge
Indy's 2016 Halloween/Horror Challenge
Indy's 2015 Halloween/Horror Challenge
Indy's 2014 Halloween/Horror Challenge
Indy's 2013 Halloween/Horror Challenge
Indy's 2012 Halloween/Horror Challenge
Indy's 2011 Halloween/Horror Challenge
Indy's 2010 Halloween/Horror Challenge
Indy's 2009 Halloween/Horror Challenge

Goal= 50 (Finished with 61)
* indicates first time viewing (Finished with 13)

September 30
1. Child's Play* (2019)- If you had asked me if they should remake this quasi-classic, I'd have said hells no. And that's why I'm kinda an idiot, cause it was actually good. They did enough new things with it, think Black Mirror, to make it worthwhile.

October 1
2. The VVitch (2016)- Man, they don't make them like this anymore. What a thoughtful, purposeful, and interesting film. But they are missing an opportunity with more Black Phillip, just imagine Black Phillip: Season of the VVitch, Black Phillip's Revenge, Black Phillip Takes Manhattan, and (of course) Black Phillip in Space.

October 2
3. Marianne S1 E1: Your Dreams*, S1 E2: Tradition*- Very good start with all the spooky and the distressful. This might not be politically correct, but a lot of old women are just plain frightening. And this might not be politically correct either, but the only thing that feels French about this are the doors.

October 3
4. Kolchak: The Night Stalker S1 E1: The Ripper*, S1 E2: The Zombie*- Watching this is like looking back through your high school yearbook. It's a mix of fun and interesting stories along with some cringe worthy dialogue, action, and effects.
5. Marianne S1 E3: Not an Easy Person*, S1 E4: Beautiful Moment*

October 4
6. The Thing (2011)- Look, you paint yourself into a corner doing a prequel to the Thing. So they acquitted themselves well, telling us what happened to the Norwigs with good acting and decent effects. But couldn't someone have asked the Thing, "why are you here", "what do you really look like", and "did we really land on the moon?"
7. Penny Dreadful S2 E6: Glorious Horrors*, S2 E7: Little Scorpion*

October 5
8. Bloody Birthday* (1981)- Charming little slasher that proves my theory, kids are just as creepy and evil as old women. Interesting to see the other Julie Brown before the valley girl shtick.
9. Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil And Vile* (2019) [WC]- I don't think I wanna live in a world where a movie about Ted Freakin' Bundy isn't considered horror. A drama? Kramer vs Kramer is a drama. What's next, Friday the 13th is listed as a nature video? Anyways, Efron was serviceable as Bundy and this was overall not bad.
10. Scream 2 (1997)- AKA the Scream franchise gets woke. This is more of the same, pretty faces uttering snappy dialogue, then spewing blood out of newly made orifices. But it is a nice stroll down 90's TV lane.

October 6
11. Midnight Meat Train (2011)- Carnage incarnate! I don't know what this movie is saying; Humans are meat puppets? Gore is art? Love your work? Whatever it is, this movie is a bloody good time.
12. Lair of the White Worm* (1988)- Dr. Who and Hugh Grant vs a sometimes hot, sometimes not lassie and baby sand worm. There's a bit o'psychedelic funk here along with an over-baked Christianity Paganism conflict. Come on, everyone knows Christianity absorbs Paganism for breakfast.
13. Sinister 2 (2015)- First off, I did like this. No, really, it's not a bad follow up. That said, now Imma rip it a new one. It's like whoever made this didn't understand the nuances of the first film or of how to build suspense through mystery. Showing the monsters way too much minimizes their effectiveness. That's just Jaws 101. Also, what did I say about kids? Dead or alive, they creepy.
14. As Above So Below (2014)- I didn't see 25% of this movie due to the crazy, lazy camera work (aka found footage style) nor hear 25% of the dialogue due to whispering or French accents. The 75% or so I did see/hear was pretty good, although it leaves you with more questions than answers. Main one being why would you even talk to someone who left you in a Turkish prison?

October 7
15. Mirror Mirror* (1990)- Someone must have said, "Hey, lets do a sequel to Beetlejuice and have the mother and daughter move to Beverly Hills 90120." Not kidding, Winona Ryder could sue for copyright infringement of a fictional character. Wait, is that Ned... Ryerson. "Needlenose Ned"? "Ned the Head"? Ned Ryerson, did the whistling belly-button trick at the high school talent show? Bing! Ned Ryerson, got the shingles real bad senior year, almost didn't graduate? Bing, again. Ned Ryerson, dated my sister Mary Pat a couple times until I told him not to anymore? Well?
16. Candyman (1992)- A Gothic urban tale that hinges on Tony Todd's performance and man does he bring it. If some schmuck says the 90's suck for horror, point to this movie and say, "Be my victim bitch!" Unless it's a woman, then leave off the bitch part.
17. Creepshow (1982)- How can I describe this over the top, campy yet charming macabre comic book come to life? I have no IKEA. I will say most of the cast is old white people, not judging cause old white people hate to be judged (ironic, since they love judging), just pointing it out.

October 8
18. Return to Horror High (1987)- You know what's worse than bad acting? Bad jokes. I get they were satirizing the horror genre, being meta before meta was cool, but those "jokes" were worse than any gore. And what the hell Clooney, you lose a bet or something?

October 9
19. Casper (1995)- I know what you're thinking, since my girls have aged out of enjoying this fun and charming little movie, why am I still watching it? My answer to that is simple... oh my god, look behind you. No, seriously, it's coming right for you! (runs away)

October 10
20. Below (2002)- Submarines are spooky by their nature, so it's the perfect setting for a suspenseful thriller. Well written and acted, even if the SPX are a bit dated. This is more of a long episode of the Twilight Zone. Want your mind blown, Alan from The Hangover did say his grandfather died during WWII and there's a character that looks just like him.

October 11
21. The Perfection* (2019)- Hands down the most intense, hardest to watch scene I've seen this challenge. It was so bad, I vowed to stop telling people to 'go shit yourself'. A crazy movie that was probably taken straight outta Larry Nassar's nightmare.

October 12
22. Kolchak: The Night Stalker S1 E3: They Have Been, They Are, They Will Be...*, S1 E4: The Vampire*
23. Penny Dreadful S2 E8: Memento Mori*, S2 E9: And Hell Itself My Only Foe*
24. Gothika (2003)- Underrated scary prison tale with the pulchritudinous Halle Berry battling ghost. And I do mean battling, that ghost might be Ike Turner in drag. Also starring a younger Iron Man doing his speed talking thing.

October 13
25. Scream 3 (2000)- AKA the kitchen sink. Obviously these get worse with each installment and this one is like decent fanfic. More interested in jokes and cameos than interesting characters, plot, and scares. It's not bad, but you can see the franchise plodding along and stumbling into second base.
26. Into the Tall Grass* (2019)- Interesting idea that feels familiar, but overall just doesn't work. Call it Ed Warren investigates the Children of the Tall Grass if you want, but the story that was the most interesting never gets told.
27. Marianne S1 E5: You Left Her*, S1 E6: Memories*

October 14
28. Jennifer's Body (2009)- Grab your too cool for high school slang translator and teen satire glasses and enjoy this Clueless meets The Possession of Regina George movie mash-up. Can I take a moment here and talk about the vomiting? Not just in this movie, but EVERY movie? Used to be heard and not seen, but lately (as in like the last 15 years or so) spew shots are the horror movie version of money shots.
29. Penny Dreadful S2 E10: And They Were Enemies*, S3 E1: The Day Tennyson Died*

October 15
30. Vampires (1998)- This movie has aged about as well as James Woods. Sure, it is still kinda fun and entertaining, but the misogyny and toxic masculinity stick out like me at a Billie Eilish concert. And let me stop you right there, no this wasn't true to the times, I was there in 98 and most guys didn't act like that. The big difference is the behavior wasn't called out like it is now. Cry all you want about how SJWs are ruining being an asshole, but the good news is you can still make this movie today, just not with studio money because society has evolved. The only thing stopping you from getting off your moon pies, grabbing your lil iPhone, calling up Jimmy Woods (I am sure he's available) and going to town, is yourself.

October 16
31. Urban Legend (1998)- This gets lumped in as just another Scream clone and sure, it probably is, but this is like Friday the 13th to Scream's Halloween. Playing on the urban legends we all grew up with is fun to build a movie around, but the absence of the hook-handed escaped maniac was a huge plot hole. Talented cast and interesting story makes this one an almost classic.

October 18
32. House at the End of the Street (2012)- I am just gonna say it, this is a pretty good movie. It has a good cast and a decent story with a nice twist. And Elisabeth Shue, who has aged very well. Really the only problem is that derivative title. Here's a fact that I just made up, 37% of all horror movies have the word house in the title. Now I am ready to be president.

October 19
33. Kolchak: The Night Stalker S1 E5: The Werewolf*, S1 E6: Firefall*
34. Haunted S2 E1: The Mimic*, S2 E2: Ward of Evil*, S2 E3: Cult of Torture*, S2 E4: Spirits from Below*- About as true as The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, the biggest mystery is why the hell am I still watching this fake news. Ghosts and demons aren't real, but mental illness sure as hell is. That being said, the actors telling their stories and the better looking versions of them acting 'em out are effective. We do need more diversty in our evil spirits though.
35. Halloween (1978)- My yearly watch of this slasher classico. I can't claim to see something new every time I watch, but this is so entertaining and well made that cliche' (and possible sign of diabetes) doesn't matter.
36. Halloween II (1981)- The first of the three part twos of the Halloween franchise and arguably the best. A step down from the original, but not a huge one. Little known fact, the first socialized medical hospital opened in Haddonfield back in 1980. Then Michael Myers, backed by big pharmaceutical companies, shut that shit down in one night.

October 20
37. Urban Legends: Final Cut (2000)- A step down from the original, but it's not like the original was Halloween or anything, so who cares. It's kinda entertaining, but you spend most of the movie not trying to figure out who the killer is, but who the older professor is. Spoiler alert, it's Harry Ellis from Die Hard. "Hans, boobey, I'm your white knight.”
38. Fright Night (2011)- This is remake 101, stay true to the original's spirit, but update it and change enough to give it a reason to exist. This is just a fun flick with a great cast.

October 21
39. Bad Moon* (1996) This wasn't bad per se, just sunk by some wooden acting. Someone please explain to me how Mariel Hemingway had a career? Also, the lead wolf Eddie, had the range of a body pillow. 5 will get you 10 they had a special Lannister relationship.
40. Unfriended 2: Dark Web* (2018) They weren't kidding calling this dark. It was compelling to watch, but I am now more scared of the WWDW than old ladies or kids.
41. Hocus Pocus (1993) This truly gets better with every viewing. The spirit of Halloween captured on celluloid, at least the 90's version of it. I believe there are two kinds of people, those would don't like this movie and those that will one day ascend into heaven... or Valhalla or Shangri-la or Disney World, whatever.

October 22
42. Marianne S1 E7: Too Young to Handle*, S1 E8: On a Tuesday*

October 23
43. Castle Rock S2 E1: Let The River Run*, S2 E2: New Jerusalem*- If you would have told me back in the 90's that one day I'd be slightly attracted to Annie Wilkes, I would have hobbled your stank ass. Lizzy Caplan does an uncanny imitation of a younger Katy Bates in a very intriguing start to a whole new and different season two of Castle Rock.

October 24
44. Kolchak: The Night Stalker S1 E7: The Devil's Platform*, S1 E8: Bad Medicine*
45. Misery (1990) I think I understand who Annie Wilkes is now. She is basically the embodiment of a toxic fanbase. Whether it's Star Wars, Marvel, or anything popular, she is the epitome of crazy trolls who feel an unnatural connection and entitlement to intellectual property they did not create. You spend time on the internet bashing the new Star Wars movies, you are Annie Wilkes. You attack creators, actors, writers, directors, etc. on Twitter, you are Annie Wilkes! Chew on that ya dirty birds.

October 25
46. Lady in White (1988) Back in the 80's I loved this little spooky tale, but unfortunately it hasn't aged well. Still enjoyable overall, but the tone is erratically and the humor and FX are unsophisticated.

October 26
47. Little Monsters* (2019)- Starts off strong, a 'bad adult' doing and saying inappropriate, funny things around a child. But once this zero turns into a hero, it becomes a run of the mill and run away from zombies generic episode of the Walkabout Dead.
48. Carrie (1976)- So this is where the red neck rallying cry git-r-done comes from. Points off for that. I wish I could have seen this back in 1976, I am sure the impact was much greater then. But now that we have the X-Men and Stranger Things, this is less effective.
49. Penny Dreadful S3 E2: Predators Far and Near*, S3 E3: Good and Evil Braided Be*

October 27
50. Goosebumps 2* (2019)- I know this will lose me a million followers, but I liked this. Funny and really captures the commercialism of Halloween (the costumes, yard decor, modern stories) in an entertaining way.
51. In the Mouth of Madness (1994) Lovecraft meets King via Carpenter. I just wish they'd have gotten Rob Bottin to do the creatures, the ones in the movie were more like Disney animatronics. I am beginning to think maybe Sutter Cane wrote the playbook on immigration based on this movie, sell irrational and specious fear to the simple-minded in order to control them.
52. Eli* (2019) Pretty much the opposite of how I felt about Little Monsters, the beginning is your generic haunted house with ghost who are either hurting or helping and no characters to really care about, then it turns on a dime in the 3rd act and becomes interesting. Too bad I was not invested once the twist sprang.

October 28
53. The Addams Family (1991)- This is what I think of when someone says, 'black comedy'. The casting is spot on and the humor is fast, furious, and funny. I never saw the t.v. show or read the comics, so this is my baseline for the franchise.

October 29
54. Needful Things (1993)- King being King, showing us how "ordinary people" are merely a slight nudge away from going completely Jack Torrance. I think the moral of this story is many of our professional religious leaders wouldn't recognize the devil if he/she was sitting on the throne. As a matter of fact, they'd be more inclined to help him/her get there than oppose. Think about that when someone is preaching fear of the devil... they are probably in league with him/her.
55. Penny Dreadful S3 E4: A Blade of Grass*, S3 E5: This World Is Our Hell*

October 30
56. House of 1000 Corpses (2003)- Zombie's version of the Texas Chain Saw Massacre where everyone is dumber and more, hmmmm, let's just say rustic. Robbie is like the horror version of Kevin Smith and this is his Clerks. They both basically write the same characters and dialogue for every movie.

October 31
57. Kolchak: The Night Stalker S1 E9: The Spanish Moss Murders*, S1 E10: The Energy*
58. Trick 'r Treat (2007)- You want 100 minutes of Halloween fun, humor, spooks, gore, and learn a thing or two about the holiday? Pop this sucker into your player (or stream, whichever chews your Charleston), sit back and enjoy.
59. Penny Dreadful S3 E6: No Beast So Fierce*, Haunted S2 E5: Demon of War*, S2 E6: Born Cursed*
60. Paranormal Activity 2 (2010)- I do love how simple these movies are, yet how real they feel. I mean the dialogue and chemistry of the family, not the demons. I'm not mentally ill ya know.
61. It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown, Toy Story of Terror, The Legend of Sleepy Hollow

davidh777

Gobear

First-time View: 24
Streaming: 26
Television: 17
Blu-Ray: 15
DVD: 7

Sept. 13-Full moon + Friday the 13th Bonus Day
1. Scream of the Wolf (1974), YouTube-When Hollywood actors were on the downward arc of their careers in the 1970s, they could find work in TV-movies and anthology series like The Love Boat and Fantasy Island. Peter Graves plays a professional hunter who is involved with a hunt for a lupine killer, who might be his former friend, Clint Walker.
2. Cold Ground (2017), Prime-A found footage flick set in 1976, hence the digitally added scratches and dirt to make the movie look old. The plot concerns French documentarians exploring cattle mutilations in the Swiss Alps who find themselves on the menu. This really was tedious to sit through.
3. An American Werewolf in London (1981),Blu-Nearly 40 years later this movie still packs a punch.

Sept. 30
4. Nosferatu the Vampyre (1979), Blu--Werner Herzog's remake of the FW Murnau vampire classic Nosferatu is drenched with foreboding from the first frame, as Popul Vuh's music plays over shots of mummified children. Klaus Kinski is chilling as the vampire Graf Orlok who is draining the life from the people of Bremen.
5. Videodrome (1982), DVD--David Cronenberg thought TV would devour humanity, if only he had foreseen Twitter!
6. Night of the Living Dead (1968),Blu-I think the chief reason that NOTLD still works today 51 years later is its B/W photography, which gives the film a timeless feel, and how Romero uses the camera to throw the viewer off with odd angles and shadows.

Oct. 1
7. Cat People (1942), DVD--Val Lewton gets the credit for this film's success, but it's Jacques Tourneur's moody, atmospheric direction that sells this film.
8. The Uncanny (1977), YouTube--A Canadian anthology film featuring Peter Cushing as an author who tells tales of cats avenging their owners as proof that cats are secretly the evil overlords of humanity.
9. The Carrier (1988), YouTube--CATS OR DEATH!

Oct. 2
10. Bride of Frankenstein (1935), Watch TCM--A sequel superior to the original.
11. Arnold (1973)-YouTube- A truly bizarre horror comedy that plays as if Agatha Christie wrote for television. After a gold-digger marries her dead fiance, the members of the wedding party die one by one.
12. A Return to Salem's Lot (1987),TV--Holy shit, this was awful! The basic set-up, an anthropologist discovers an isolated New England village that turns out to be controlled by vampires, has promise, but it was handled so incompetently that watching this was a test of endurance.
13. It Stains the Sands Red (2017)-TV- I watched this for last year's challenge and loved it. A Las Vegas stripper finds herself stranded in the desert during the zombie apocalypse after her car and boyfriend die. This is a top-notch zombie film, and the lead actress is terrific as the stripper who discovers her inner strength as she struggles to get to her son.

Oct. 3
14. The Birds (1963), DVD--One of my favorite Hitchcock films, although knowing now the harassment he inflicted on Tippi Hedren makes watching the film a difficult experience.
15. Pledge (2018), Hulu-Three nerds try to pledge a fraternity that turns out to be a terminal experience

Oct. 4
16. Anna and the Apocalypse (2017), Putlocker--This movie combine my 3 favorite genres: musicals, zombies, and Christmas. Terrific songs and a fresh-faced cast plus zombie gore make this a holiday perennial I hope this comes out on Blu-Ray in time for Christmas.
17. The Dead Don't Die (2019), Putlocker--Jim Jarmusch can be a mixed bag, but this movie is terrible. The movie constantly winks at the audience, throwing in Brechtian reminders that we are watching a work of fiction, which destroyed my involvement with the characters. The cast is fantastic, but this fails as satire and as a zombie film. Two thumbs down.
18. Return of the Living Dead II (1988)-TV- While RotLD II is a definite step down from the original classic, it's still worth watching as an 80s time capsule. Despite the II, this is a remake, and not a sequel.
19. Fido (2017), DVD--Fido is a small gem, about an alternate 1950s where humanity has barely survived a zombie apocalypse.

Oct. 5
20. Quatermass and the Pit (1968),Blu-One of my favorite Hammer films, in which it is posited that ancient Martians engineered the evolution of humanity into thinking beings. The melding of ancient evil and modern science is one of my favorite horror tropes. The Scream Factory Blu is packed with extras, and is a marked improvement over the old DVD.
21. Prince of Darkness (1988),Blu-Another example of modern science confronting primordial evil. Carpenter's screenplay is a touch too vague and incoherent, but it works nonetheless
22. Dawn of the Dead (2004),Blu-The zombie baby was a bad idea.

Oct. 6
23. The House With a Clock In Its Walls (2018), TV--I was surprised by how much I enjoyed this Disney story of an orphaned boy who goes to live with his warlock uncle. Cate Blanchett is elegant as always and Jack Black is at his Jack Blackiest as the magical uncle. I thought Kyle would show up for a Tenacious D reunion for a moment
24. Slaughterhouse Rulez (2018), TV-This might be too British for me, even though it has Michael Sheen, Simon Pegg, and Nick Frost in the cast. A British public school (which we would call a private school) is forced to combat underground monsters that have been summoned by a fracking plant on the school's land.

Oct. 7
25. 100 Bloody Acres (2013), Prime-I really enjoyed this horror/ comedy blend about a pair of brothers running a small fertilizer business that sells a "special blend" a la Soylent Green.

Oct. 8
26. Seven Deaths in the Cat's Eye(1973), YouTube-A young girl returns to her ancestral castle which is possibly being sold away from the family. There are eerie rumors of vampires afoot as members of the household are slaughtered. As usual, the culprit is a human. The cinematography is stunning. Italians might be rubbish at writing coherent screenplays, but they are unmatched at sheer style.
27. Eyes of Laura Mars (1978),Blu-I'm glad this high fashion slasher flick finally got a Blu release because it is a total 70s campfest. This movie's so old Tommy Lee Jones looks hot. Faye Dunaway is a haute couture photographer whose work blends sex with violence. She begins to have psychic visions of murders of people in her circle. Tommy Lee Jones plays the detective investigating the crimes who becomes romantically involved with Dunaway. Hilarity ensues.

Oct. 9
28. Demon Knight (1995), DVD-William Sadler and Jada Pinkett are terrific in this story of a wounded man stranded at a run-down motel in the middle of nowhere who recruits a new soldier in the fight to save Creation from being unmade by the forces of Hell. Pre-Titanic Billy Zane plays the villain, a demon searching for an artifact that will bring the reign of darkness over the entire universe. The cast is made up of familiar character actors like CCH Pounder and Dick Miller, and the mid-90s practical effects still stand up today.

Oct. 10
29. Chopping Mall (1986),Blu-All the killing could have been avoided if the the mall security had installed surge protectors so the Protector robots wouldn't go on a murder spree from a single lightning bolt.
30. The Black Cat (1934), TV--Definitely the best of all the Karloff/ Lugosi pairings.
31. Curse of the Demon, (1957), TV--Dana Andrews is a woefully unappreciated leading man, a shame that booze ruined his career. Here he plays a skeptic who becomes convinced that the occult world is real.

Oct. 11
32. Call Girl of Cthlhu (2014), Blu-Despite the Troma-level production values and mostly atrocious acting, this little Lovecraft horror/ comedy about a young artist who tries to save his hooker girlfriend from becoming a bride of Cthulhu kept me entertained.
33. Suspiria (1979), Watch TCM--I had forgotten how good this movie is. It starts out scary and the tension keeps building until the fiery climax. Of course, witches are evil, but I don't see the point of having a dance school if you keep killing your students.
34. The Devil's Bride (1968), Watch TCM--I need to buy the Scream Factory release of this movie. Definitely one of the best late Hammer films, with Christopher Lee as the hero

Oct. 12
35. Scarecrows (1988), Prime-If I taught a class on film, I would use this as an example of low-budget story-telling. In the first 5 minutes we get the exposition, the relationships of the characters, and the set-up of the main conflict. Now that's it's going OOP, I need to add this to my shopping list.
36. Little Monsters (2019), Hulu--Lupita Nyong'o shines as the World's Greatest Kindergarten Teacher who protects the children in her care when a US military facility in Australia unleashes a zombie outbreak, with the help of David, the smitten uncle of one of her students. Josh Gad plays a degenerate kiddie show host caught in the mayhem. I really wanted to like this movie, but the pacing is skewed, and the movie wastes the first 20 minutes of the film establishing David as a hopeless case of arrested development.
37. Vampires (2010), Hulu--A mockumentary about a family of Belgian vampires that just plodded along with no humor or plot. What We Do In the Shadows covered this territory much better.

Oct. 13
38. Upgrade (2018)-TV- Total adrenaline rush from the jump. A man turned quadriplegic from a botched robbery that left his wife dead seeks revenge through an AI implanted into his nervous system.
39. Overlord (2018)-TV- The plot about WWII soldiers who've landed in France on D-Day discovering mad Nazi scientists creating monsters has been done before, but this iteration is engaging and entertaining.
40. The Company of Wolves (1984)-DVD- A collection of morality tales about people becoming wolves as a reflection of their inner natures.

Oct. 14.
41. In the Mouth of Madness (1994)-DVD-The best Lovecraft movie not based on any Lovecraft story.
42. The Valley of Gwangi-(1969)-Blu-Not my favorite Harryhausen, but you have to love cowboys and dinosaurs
43. The Mummy's Ghost-(1944)-Blu-There's no ghost here, just Kharis the mummy chasing a young woman who is te reincarnation of his lost love Ananka.
42. The Mummy's Curse-(1944)-Blu-Kharis is back although I'm confused how he carries Ananka into a swamp in New England, but emerges in Louisiana Cajun country.

Oct. 15.
43. Blood Fest (2018)-TV-A horror film festival becomes a slaughter house when the convention organizer decides to create a real-life horror movie by killing the attendees and filming the results. I wanted to like this, but despite some clever twists, I just didn't care about the characters.

Oct. 16.
44. Truth or Dare (2017)-Netflix-A gang of 20-somethings start a game of Truth or Dare that turns into a ghastly series of mutilation and death. This is a SyFy original and not the theatrical film. Hell of a lotta fun
45. We All Scream For Ice Cream--Daily Motion--The ghost of an ice cream vending clown wreaks sweet revenge on the men who killed him during a prank as children.

Oct. 17.
46.Dead & Buried (1981)-DVD-Instead of the usual flesh-eating monsters, this movie has traditional voodoo zombies.
47. The Fog-(1980)-Blu-One of John Carpenter's best films, this never fails to creep me out despite having seen it multiple times over the last 40 years.

Oct. 18.
48. Body Snatchers-(1993)-Blu-Abel Ferrara's remake is solid, seriously scary, albeit aimed more at teenagers.

Oct. 19
49. The Changeling (1980), DVD-George C. Scott turns in another great performance as a composer who has lost his family in a tragic accident which has given him a connection to the spirit of a murdered child. The Changeling is a superior ghost story with atmospheric direction and a terrific cast. The sound editing in particular really adds to the eerie aura in this film.
50. White Zombie, (1932), TV--The movie about zombies and voodoo on Haiti is OK, but Bela Lugosi gives a star turn as Murder Legendre
51 Svengoolie: The Mummy's Hand, (1940), TV--None of the Mummy sequels are great cinema, but they are always entertaining. Dick Foran as the dashing hero definitely echoes in the Indiana Jones films and Brendan Fraser in The Mummy

Oct. 20
52. Fanged Up (2017)-Putlocker-A low-brow British comedy about a prison run by vampires who collect AB- prisoners as their food supply. The lead actor apparently got his start as a Twitter comedian, and wow, is he annoying.
53. Let Me In, (2010), TV-- Generally, American remakes of foreign films tend to lose the elements that make the original work, but this is a strong exception. I'd say that this is even better than the Swedish original.
54. John Carpenter's Vampires, (1996), TV-- James Woods found his ideal role as a homophobic, racist vampire hunter.
55. Deep Rising-(1997)-Blu-A good old-fashioned monster movie is a terrific way to spend a rainy Sunday afternoon.
56. Thirst (2010)-TV-Park Chan-Wook's vampire film is less a horror film although it is, than a meditation of loss of self and guilt. The vampire here had no choice; he's a priest who was turned by tainted blood and his blood thirst provokes profound despair.

Oct. 21.
57. Re-Animator-(1986)-Blu-From the first blood-soaked moment you know you are in for a gory thrill ride, and, wow, this film delivers. Jeffrey Combs was born to play the creepy Herbert West whose unorthodox ideas on resurrecting the dead create a hellzapopping organpalooza.

Oct. 22
58. Prophecy (1979)-Prime-A public health physician and his cellist wife run into mutant critters in the Maine woods spawned by.the polluted runoff from a paper mill. The movie plays like an artifact from a more enlightened era: a woman's right to choose, the EPA caring about pollution, Native American rights.
59. It's The Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown! (1966)/ Toy Story of Terror (2013)/ Bugs Bunny's Howl-O-Ween Special (1978)/ The Simpsons Treehouse of Horror XXX (2019)--TV
60. Wounds (2019), Hulu. Armie Hammer plays a New Orleans bartender who finds a message on a patron's lost smartphone which starts him down a path of Lovecraftian revelations. If you are triggered by bugs, do not watch this flick because it is buggier than an Apple iOS update. It's one of those "is he channeling Elder Gods or is he crazy" plots that just doesn't gel properly.

Oct. 23
61. Keep Watching (2017), TV. I only watched this for the theme because I dislike torture porn intensely. The story here is that masked killers terrorize a family and broadcast their suffering online. It's well done if you like that kind of thing.
62. Scream (1996)-Netflix-Scream has held up remarkably well; the cast's careers, less so. When was the last time you saw Skeet Ulrich in anything?
63. Us (2019)-Streaming-Good movie, although ultimately it still a slasher movie with a sci-fi twist.

Oct. 24
64. Creepshow 2 (1987)-Shudder-Not as bad as its reputation, the strongest story is The Raft, not least due to Paul Satterfield's Speedo in a Best Supporting Role.
65. Needful Things (1993)--Blu-Max von Sydow is terrific as Leland Gaunt, small town storekeeper of precious objects. In fact, the whole movie is perfectly cast.It's a shame the budget didn't cover Gaunt flying off in a dragon-drawn chariot at the end of the book.

Oct. 25
66. Joe Bob Briggs--Demon Wind (1990)--Shudder--This was a a shoddy, low budget Evil Dead Ripoff, but Joe Bob's breaks made it worth watching.
67. Joe Bob Briggs--Society (1989)--Shudder--If I had to describe this movie in one word, it would be "eccentric" The effects at the climactic orgy are the most bizarre I have ever seen.
68. Nosferatu (1922), TV--The first filmed version of Stoker's Dracula was nearly a lost film because Stoker's widow tried to have all copies of the film destroyed. Luckily, she failed, so we have this poetic meditation on death, embodied by the cadaverous Graf Orlok.
69. The Hunger (1983), TV--Poor David Bowie never had a chance to grow really old, Tony Scott's direction relies way too much on billowing curtains and flying doves, as if vampires lived in a music video. Sarandon and Deneuve making out to the Flower Duet from Lakme is the only scene anybody remembers. I wish more of Miriam's backstory from the novel had been included.

Oct. 26
70. The Final Wish (2019), TV. A failing lawyer returns to his hometown for his father's funeral. Among Dad's possession's the lawyer finds an urn that grants wishes, aaaaannnddd you can guess that Things Go Horribly Wrong.
71. Double Date (2017), TV. This year's FTVs have been pretty bad, and this is no exception. The plot involves a guy who is still a virgin who is trying to get laid on his 30th birthday. The girls he and his friend meet at a bar have other plans involving black magic and virgin sacrifice. The ideas here had potential, but I just found this flick a tedious bore to sit through.
72. Await Further Instructions (2018), Netflix. This was really good, if seriously depressing with a downer ending. A dysfunctional British family together for Christmas discover the are imprisoned in their home by an entity that communicates with them through the television. Hilarity does not ensue.
Wild Card #1--73. The Terminator (1984) Theatrical--While this is usually categorized as sci-fi, it is also a killer robot horror movie.Arnold is scary AF in this.

Oct. 27.
74. Rosemary's Baby-(1968)-Blu-You don't get slow burn movies like this nowadays.

Oct. 28
75. All the Creatures Were Stirring (2017)-Shudder-A low-budget Christmas-themed with stories ranging from a homicidal Rudolph to a Christmas demon. Christmas horror can be enthralling (see Krampus), but here none of the stories worked.
76. Vault of Horror (2017)-Streaming-Not as good as its predecessor, Tales From the Crypt, but still a fun watch. I'm glad that the restored film with the complete vampire story has been released

Oct. 29
77. Assimilate (2019)-Netflix-The title gives away the secret to this Disney Channelesque version of Invasion of the Body Snatchers. Two teen boys making YouTube videos about their boring small town discover that their friends and neighbors are being transformed into soulless automatons, although the culprits here are bugs that become copies of humans instead of plants.For a low budget horror flick, this is pretty decent.
78. Haunter (2013), TV.A novel take on the haunted house story. A teenage girl becomes aware that she and her family are stuck repeating one day in 1985 because that's the day they were murdered. She discovers the killer is still active and she uses her ghostly powers to try to save a victim's life. Really enjoyed this.

Oct. 30
79. Phantom of the Paradise (1974), Amazon.Paul Williams wrote some terrific music.
80. The Last Exorcism (2010)-Netflix-Patrick Fabian of Better Call Saui gives a terrific performance as a fraudulent exorcist who encounters a genuine demonic possession.I've seen this several times, and it still makes me jump.
81. SNL Halloween (2019), TV/ Spooky Treats Unwrapped (2002), TV
82. Dr. Horrible's Sing Along Blog (2008)--DVD, This is still heartbreaking. The last note makes me tear up. Poor Billy.

Halloween
83. The Paul Lynde Halloween Special (1978), Amazon/ Halloween Unwrapped (2007), TV
84. The Terror of Hallow's Eve (2017), TV. A teenage boy accidentally uses blood magic to summon a demon that punishes his bullies. This had its moments, but overall really lacked any suspense.

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