Christmas time is here by golly,
Disappointment would be folly.
Deck the halls with hunks of Holly,
Fill the cups, and don’t say when….

Kill the gooses, ducks and chickens,
Trim the spruces, drag out the Dickens.
Even though the prospect sickens,
Brother here we go again…

(With apologies to Tom Lehrer.)

Whoa… we’ve made it to two whole Christmases of movie nights. If this keeps up, I might start having trouble with holiday-themed horror flicks. At least for now, I’ve got a few more, and this year I’ve got a flick I really should have gone to the first time around.

So, without further ado, I tell everyone to be good and get their stockings hung up, because Christmas Evil is almost upon us…

(And yes, I’m well aware “Christmas Evil” is another Christmas horror flick…)

The Mistletoe: Gremlins (special edition, 1984, 106 minutes) Ladies and gentlemen… the first horror movie I ever saw. At the tender age of seven I managed to convince my mother that I really wanted to see it, despite having been utterly terrified of horror flicks until then. (I had to leave the theater five times during the scary parts.) Taking place on, and originally intended for, a Christmas release, this Spielberg-produced flick was instead rushed out to compete with Ghostbusters and the second Indiana Jones flick, and is popularly credited (along with Temple of Doom) with forcing the creation of the PG-13 rating. My traumatized seven-year-old self, remembering the brief flashes of blood onscreen, would probably have agreed. Despite scaring kids half to death, the combination of spectacular puppet work, surprisingly bloody and vicious violence (both perpetrated on and by the Gremlins), overarching morality-play structure, and inclusion of an unbearably cute mascot (Gizmo), made the film a spectacular box-office success and one of the few horror films to ever really take off in the merchandising department. Toys from the film briefly supplanted the ubiquitous “suction cup Garfield” as the kitsch torchbearer in my childhood memories. A somewhat childish (if darkly so) comedy, we’re all introduced to the dark side of “Furby’s” great-grandfather when we don’t obey those three cardinal rules: no direct sunlight… never get them wet… never ever feed them after midnight. (Seriously… do I really have to ‘sell’ this one to y’all?)

The Fruitcake: Silent Night, Deadly Night (1984, 85 minutes) AKA: “the infamous one.” One of the few films so socially upsetting as to cause actual public outcry, the usual gangs of the PTA and other “concerned parents” began picketing theaters against this film. Movie reviewers around the country panned the flick in the strongest available terms. Siskel and Ebert pointedly read the cast list on their show, saying “shame!” after each name. The furor actually got Tri-Star to pull it from theaters in its third week, despite turning more than a healthy profit for such a low-budget ($750,000) flick, and cancelled the entire west-coast run. The film was effectively banned outright in Britain. The reason for the furor? The flick was seen as an assault on Christmas, and, in particular, on the icon of Santa Claus by associating him with the slasher tropes. Oddly, I can almost agree; there’s a particularly mean-spirited undercurrent in the film. Sure, there’s violence and gore (two rapes, twelve deaths, and a partridge in a pear tree), but even considering that, the flick seems a concentrated dose of holiday disillusionment and mental scars for “little billy.” It’s filled with nasty little moments that could be over-the-top hilarious, but stop short of playing it for laughs, making it despondently dark instead. The film is plainly low-budget, unevenly acted, grainy, and meandering in most of the second act. It seems a bit of a throwback to the 70’s grindhouse features, but is better structured, preoccupied with an amazingly intense slow burn for the film’s first 30 minutes. This one really is a nasty antidote to all of that Christmas elevator music playing in the department stores at this time of year. But the cure may be worse than the poison…

WARNING: Seriously, this one will do its best to kill your holiday spirit. If you’ve gotta make nice with the relatives this week, you might want to skip this flick.

Looking back over the last eighty movie night presentations, it is more notable what hasn’t been included in the lineup thus far, than what has. After all, we’ve yet to see any Hitchcock or Cronenburg, or even Stephen King adaptations, each of which comprise sizeable and important bodies of work in the horror genre. However, perhaps most startlingly absent from a historic standpoint would be another classic set of icons: the Universal Monster series. Forming a stable of stories and creatures that fed the studio system for decades, imitated and remade dozens of times and each eventually run into the ground or turned into utter parodies of themselves in Warner Brother’s Cartoons, the rouges’ gallery of Dracula, the Wolfman, the Mummy, the Creature from the Black Lagoon, and the Invisible Man as depicted by Universal Studios practically epitomized the concept of “Western Horror” before the advent of modern slasher fare.

So this week, we’ll correct this deficiency by visiting a classic; the name pointedly missing from the lineup above, under the direction of a legend whose name is sadly almost unknown among modern audiences. So gather round, because…

‘I’ve got a whale of a tale to tell ya’ lad,
A Whale of a tale or two…

Fire BAD!: Frankenstein (1931, 71 minutes) It’s difficult to understate the importance of this film in horror history… or film history altogether. The breakout, and easily best remembered film for both the director James Whale, and the film’s true star William Henry Pratt (Boris Karloff), the film adapts Mary Shell’s story “Frankenstein; or the Modern Prometheus” first published in 1818. The most iconic adaptation of the story, people frequently assume that it was also the first film version. Actually, it was at least the fourth attempt, the first version created in 1910 by Thomas Edison himself. (While the lightning-charged monster would be a perfect fit for Edison, his version actually had the monster made through chemistry.) Of course, “adaptation” is a bit of a stretch… while Whale’s movie created a sympathetic monster of child-like intellect and monstrous strength, Shelly’s original story saw the creature escape and grow into an advanced intelligence through a sly piece of social commentary. Karloff’s mute monster never had the capacity to confront his creator philosophically as occurs in Shelly’s book, and Karloff’s monster isn’t finished off on the icy wastes of the arctic. Yet, despite the differences, the film so impressed audiences and overshadowed the original novel in the popular imagination, that the film version has effectively supplanted the novel’s narrative, and Karloff’s flat-topped neck-bolted appearance became the defacto monster. (The image of which Universal still has copyright on until 2026.) Unfortunately, for all of its importance, the film is not without flaws. Much of the film will look a bit clumsy or amateurish to modern audiences, containing strange anachronisms (an angry mob of gentlemen in Stetson hats and carefully knotted neckties) and rushing to finish in its 71 minute run time. A love story and happy ending are shoehorned in. “Igor” is replaced by “Fritz,” and the principle character’s names get mixed around. One take in particular will probably make this crowd burst out laughing. Still, Karloff’s excellent performance more than makes up for the flaws, and the magnificent castle sets clearly demonstrates the influences of the early German expressionism school.

Fire GOOD!: The Old Dark House (1932, 72 minutes) Thought lost until a few years ago, this is one of James Whales’ odder offerings. Essentially an atmospheric… uh… “Old Dark House” horror turned up way beyond “11,” this film was post-ironic before the ironic horror movie had even been invented. (I’m not sure I know what all those words mean, but they sound right…) The film is an adaptation of a J.B.Priestly novel “Benighted” which was a spooky story so over-written with dread, foreboding, and gloom that it became an overblown dark comedy instead. Perhaps the first ever instance of the Scooby-Doo staple “we’re having car trouble… let’s go for help at that spooky house in the middle of nowhere,” the film was made to follow-up Whale and Karloff’s success on Frankenstein. While less momentous than the Shelly adaptation, Karloff still made quite an impression… his portrayal as a mute monster of a butler became the model for “Lurch” in Chas Addams’s original “Addam’s Family” comic strips. Karloff’s employers in this film nearly match that motley crew, being an isolated enclave of neurotics and psychotics driven to distraction when our heroes show up seeking shelter from the storm. I’m afraid the film may seem somewhat directionless to modern viewers, but there are still several hilarious or surprisingly tense scenes that build nicely to the inevitable happy ending.

WARNING: Uh, Casey’s gonna have to bring this flick along with him this week. I forgot to borrow it when Dan was returning it to him… Casey? ‘S that OK?

Welcome back everyone! It’s been two weeks of drought as I hightailed it outta state to join the seasonal family feasting in ‘Bama for the only holiday that traditionally falls on a Thursday. I’m hoping everyone ate enough to induce a tryptophan coma or cranberry toxicity and thus avoid awkward conversations with distant relations and make the most of the holiday.

It occurs to me that we’ve been dwelling in older flicks almost exclusively for a while now… Since August, the only flick we’ve watched younger than 2000 was Nightmare Detective, and that was largely a throwaway concession to the need for some dream-related themes. So, anticipating cries of elitism, I’m gonna feature a more recent film in the catbird seat, and follow it up with the Friday the 13th flick we’ve been putting off. After all, since there’s vanishingly few Thanksgiving-themed horror flicks (Home Sweet Home being the only one that springs to mind), what’s more appropriate than asking a slasher flick to carve the Turkey?

The White Breast Meat: Haute Tension (aka High Tension, aka High Voltage, 2003, 91 minutes) I hadn’t realized until I watched the “making of” featurettes on this film, but until recently France didn’t have much of a national horror identity. Italy and Spain both have immensely rich horror film histories, with their own great directors and iconic film moments, but France was limited to a handful of borderline cases… terrifying surreal or art films, uproarious dark comedies or nihilistic fantasies, but nothing that could be called a cohesive body of horror genre film. (All the more ironic for “genre” being a French word.) That is, until Alexandre Aja produced a relatively low budgeted film that exploded onto the world stage and filled the deficit overnight. The success of High Tension has been followed by what is now called the “French New Wave” horror sub-genre; spectacularly callous and brutally violent films with deep arthouse-sensibility roots (pointedly violating accepted social standards in an almost philosophical manner) and typified by a grimy, sticky feel in the camerawork. Films like “Ils” (“Them”- adapted into “The Strangers”), “À l'intérieur” (“Inside”), and especially the harrowing “Martyrs” (which, in particular, has a reputation that so disturbed me, I’ve pointedly not tracked it down to watch) are shocking insider audiences around the world. For all of this, on the surface, Haute Tension is a pretty straightforward slasher flick. Of course, home-invasion flicks like this one always seem to strike so much more deeply at our psyche for their simple plausibility. Following the setup (grounded in the nastiest of late 70’s grindhouse) with a stalk-and-slash road trip (focused on the amazing and exhaustingly physical performance of Cécile De France) doesn’t do anything to reduce the film’s gradually increasing cinematic tension, and we reach a finale’ of appropriately grisly proportions. Note that, despite surface similarities in framing and cinematography to the reviled “torture porn” genre, the violence in this film is an entirely different beast; brief, brutal, and frequently off-screen, it has more in common with the violence of gritty action films.

WARNING: There is a pretty famous and controversial scene midway through the movie (one of the most effective of the film) that I managed to spoil for myself by reading movie reviews. For the best viewing, I’d avoid reviews until you see the flick yourself.

The Watery Giblet Gravy: Friday the 13th; The Final Chapter (aka: Friday the 13th part IV, 1984, 90 minutes). Has there ever been a less-accurately subtitled film? (Including the “vs.” film, there are seven sequels and a remake following this one.) So, we’ve got all the necessary ingredients for really killer gravy, right? We’ve fully established Jason’s back story, we’ve established he’s really hard to kill, we’ve established his iconic hockey mask, we’ve got a couple houses full of college-age kids at Crystal Lake, we’ve got T&A and all the right stereotypes filled out… so why does the whole concoction feel so bland? The attempts at building tension are just plodding, attempts at building character feel forced… the whole thing just comes off as an obvious retread of the third film. People are killed randomly, major characters are simply forgotten, and the film is padded out with a room full of pot smoke and an antique stag reel. About the only redeeming aspect of the film is that it contains what must be the most painfully humiliating roles in the careers of both Crispin Glover (doing what I sincerely believe to be the whitest dance ever recorded on film) and Corey Feldman (whose final plan for defeating Jason is so dumb that I think it succeeds because Jason is flabbergasted by its idiocy). The good news it that it’s only 90 minutes. The bad news is that it feels like double that.

So, we're due another Friday the 13th film before the Thanksgiving holiday, but you know what? It can wait. 'Cause I finally got around to watching Friday 4, and discovered that it's really pretty boring. A definite second-slot movie, and I've got nothing good on hand to fill the first slot.

Instead, we're going to celebrate a more important date. This coming Thursday falls on November the 19th, 2009, a much more important date, for precisely 200 years ago, in 1809, the father of modern horror, Edgar Allen Poe, was born.

(...uh. At least I thought he was. I thought it was gonna be really cool that we landed smack dab on Poe's birthday, until I actually looked it up and discovered that he was born on JANUARY 19th, not November. Crud.)

Still, the year, at least, is correct, and rather than wait on the 201st birthday, I thought y'all would be more appreciative of the 200 year mark than getting the day right. So this week we'll be celebrating America's most famous horror writer of all time; the scribe who first mastered the transfer of terror to the internal realm of the unconscious mind, who focused all the elements of his stories into achieving a "single effect" within the reader. Whose literary mark upon the new American Country remains the most indelible. This week, we celebrate Poe's Unbirthday.

Many a Quaint and Curious Volume of Forgotten Lore: The Masque of the Red Death (1964, 89 minutes). Actual adaptations of Poe's work are, perhaps, more scarce than one might expect of a great literary grandmaster who is somehow still required reading in most US high schools. Among those adaptations that do exist, one must stretch credulity to the breaking point to call any of them "faithful." The difficulty lies mostly in the extremely limited nature of Poe's stories; most of his most famous works filling only a dozen pages, filmmakers were forced to take immense liberties in order to pad the stories out to film length. With that in mind, we turn to the most famous of the Poe adaptations, the eight films created by Roger Corman between 1960 and 1964. Corman, known previously for his unbelievably tight production schedule and the ability to fund films with the change you'd find in the couch, worked against type on these films. He had lavish sets arranged and shooting schedules that stretched as long as five weeks! (His usual schedule was as short as 10 days.) Of those films, The Masque of the Red Death is my personal favorite. Richly colored (attempting to replicate the succession of rooms so essential to the story) and teetering forever on the edge of melodrama, the film stars Vincent Price as the sadistic and hubristic Prince Prospero, walled up in his castle as a barricade against the plague ravaging the land. Set in a dark fairy-tale world of Medieval costume-drama, and padded out with material from the story "Hop-Frog," as well as a nasty story of rebuffed seduction, the adaptation drifts furthest from the story when it inserts an explicit Satanist/Christian theme into the center of Poe's story. Expressionistic and nearly psychedelic (especially in the strange dance of the final reveal) the film becomes a little awkward at times, and perhaps looses some of the deeper meaning of the story, but somehow remains essentially true to the original tale. Price is truly the only one who could properly play one of Poe's brooding, menacing villains.

The Pallid Bust of Pallas: The Raven (1963, 86 minutes) By contrast we have this, easily the wonkiest of Corman's adaptations. (True, Corman stole a story of HPL's and sold it as another Poe story in "The Haunted Palace," but this is still crazier.) The poem is, of course, a brooding, mournful contemplation of the speaker on the death of his beloved, as he finds manifest his anguish in the form of a dark bird seeking shelter from the storm within his home. In Corman's adaptation of this famous, revered poem, Vincent Price is a 16th century wizard. Boris Karloff is an evil, rival wizard. A young Jack Nicholson is the handsome love interest for Lenore's daughter. And Peter Lorre plays the Raven. Yeah. The entire film is done in high camp (complete with moments of slapstick) with tongue planted firmly in cheek, and plays out more like a cookie-cutter adventure film of the day, only with added wizard battles where Price "eggs" his opponent. Much, much lighter fare, I can't really figure out how this was advertised as a horror film...

IMPORTANT NOTE: I'm stuck taking an ethics course Thursday of this week that runs from 4:00-7:00. PLEASE SHOW UP AT THE USUAL TIME. I may arrive a few minutes late, but I'll try to minimize the disruption to everyone's schedules. Jingoro is in charge this week, so hopefully he can get things started in my absence.

For this week, I'm stepping down from the carriage and handing the reins over to another host who intends to take us through time to a particularly infamous era... Victorian England in the year of 1888, when a mysterious gent terrorized the back streets of Whitecastle with a surgical precision.

So, for this week, Jingoro intends to introduce us to Jack.

The Fifth Victim: Time After Time (1979, 112 minutes) We've brought Sci-Fi into our lineup previously, but perhaps not as explicitly as with this little gem, adapted from a book by Karl Alexander. A largely forgotten classic in an era that prefers alien invasions, teenage romance, and spectacular lightshows in its "science fiction," this rather quiet, un-flashy tale of time travel and pursuit may lean dangerously towards fanboyism with the inclusion of H.G.Wells as the protagonist and volumnous Sherlock Holmes in-jokes, but retains enough of a reputation as an honestly great film that even I recall its accolades, despite never having seen the film. (Oddly, the title inspired the Cindi Lauper song of the same name.) It even stars Malcom McDowell, and will hopefully put an end to my prior observation that he's a great actor, but hasn't been in a good film since Clockwork Orange. Jingoro says: "This is one of my favorite moves of all time. A delightful look at H. G. Wells, the author, time travel, San Francisco of the late 1970s. Not very scary anymore. I think it felt scarier back when I first watched it, but time has mellowed it a bit."

The Fourth Victim: From Hell (2001, 122 minutes) In 1991 the comic book guru Alan Moore began publishing a fictionalized comic-book account of the Ripper murders in the independent serial "Taboo." An exhaustive, but rough, unfriendly treatment illustrated by Eddie Campbell, the story incorporated practically every historical fact ever collected about the killings and wove an elaborate story of arcane mysticism and secret societies, public outcry and sensational press, conspiracy and contemporary celebrity within the framework of these facts, all told (partially) from the perspective of the killer (who was revealed in the first chapter). (This was done entirely from a "wouldn't it be interesting" perspective, not as an honest attempt to determine who Jack was.) The title, for example, is taken from the return address written on perhaps the only legitimate letter recieved from the killer (validated by his inclusion of one of the victim's kidneys). Then Hollywood got a hold of it. In the film's defense, it's a beautiful, if hyperbolic color-saturated extravaganza stuffed with action and melodrama. The story became a "whodunnit," detective Abberline (played by a miscast Johnny Depp) became an absinthe-drinking opium fiend who conducted investigations based on his hallucinations, and a happy ending more absurd than the edited version of "Brazil" was added. There's even a frantic chase and carriage crash in the film. This is, perhaps, understandable, as the original would be unfilmable in anything less than a 6 or 8 part serial. Still, the gross story structure is retained, and the film is enjoyable enough taken on its own merits. Merely a far-end treatment of the Ripper killings.

WARNING: Math tells us that we have two nearly 2-hour films this week. We're gonna try to start on time so everyone isn't stuck ridiculously late.

So the schedule has gotten a bit difficult to juggle; First, we're planning on a guest-host night on the 12th of November. Those of you paying attention will realize that that week is also a Friday the 13th (the 4th in 13 months), demanding yet another night of Jason Voorhees-associated massacres in the month of November. However that'll be nudged to the 19th, since two slasher films in a row would be interminable. We got Michael Meyers last week, so we can't do Jason this week.

Additionally, it appears I may (knock on wood) have reason to celebrate this week, but my initial plan for an "IRB nightmare" theme of mad science kinda fell through for lack of an interesting pairing. Luckily, the Halloween party I attended screened a couple marvelous movies, and inspired a pairing of two GOOD (or at least "good") movies for this week. Thus, another holiday-inspired (if belated) movie pairing in celebration of that most infamous unofficial night of mischief...

I give you: Devil's Night.

The Razor-Bladed Apple: Demoni 2: L'incubo ritorna aka Demons 2 (1986, 91 minutes) First, despite being told otherwise a few days ago, this is NOT a Dario Argento-directed film. He was a writer on the script and produced the film, but the director was Lamberto Bava, the son of the great influential Italian horror director Mario Bava. The mistake is easily made, however, since Lamberto was just as influenced by Dario as Dario was by Mario, combining much of the suspense techniques of Dario with the outrageous color of Mario. But anyway: the film. Demons 2 is most easily understood as the "Evil Dead 2" of Italy. Having created a ludicrously gory, outrageous combination between zombie, possession, metatextual, and body horror phenomena with the first "Demons" film, the same group came back a year later with more money and made a "sequel" which was really just a complete do-over of the first film. The elevated skill in film structuring and especially special effects (all credit due to Rosario Prestopino) is surprising when you consider the lack of any sort of forward-moving plot or direction to the film. A simple "AHHHH! MONSTERS!" sums both movies up nicely. The only thing it's lacking is a Bruce Campbell "Ash" role for the Evil Dead comparison to be complete. The actor Bobby Rhodes appears in both films, but as completely different characters; a pimp in the first and a gym trainer in the second. While never as self-consciously campy as Evil Dead 2 (more on a level with Evil Dead 1) or similar over-the-top gorefests, the film piles so many ridiculous disasters upon one another that you can't help but laugh. Also keep an eye out for 11-year old Asia Argento in her first film appearance.

The Drain-Cleaner Brownie: John Carpenter's Prince of Darkness (1987, 102 minutes) A bit of a forgotten gem buried in Carpenter's filmography between "They Live" and "Big Trouble in Little China," this is one of those movies you've probably seen bits and pieces of on late night television but never remember very clearly. This is probably due to a couple narrative tricks of the film that make it difficult to piece together after the fact, complicating your memory of a surprisingly un-boring religious-themed horror story. Apocalyptically-themed, with flash-forwards and unreliable narrators, the story cycles around a group of graduate students in an ancient church investigating a recently-uncovered artifact, when the world outside seems to suddenly devolve into chaos. When things inside take a turn for the worse as well, the characters find themselves uncertain which way to jump. It's difficult to know what is and isn't spoiler material for this film, but I'll at least say that the pea soup from "The Exorcist" makes repeated cameos... Amusingly, in a nice bridge from last week, Donald Pleasance returns for this film as yet another character named "Loomis." Keep an eye on the crowds as well for a cameo by theatrical musician Alice Cooper.

WARNING: I speak of being unable to piece this one together in one's head because I have that same problem with this film. I'm having a tough time remembering exactly what happened in this one.

Ah! Forgot to post the halloween movie night invite here after posting to the mailing list! Crud. Here it is a day or so late.

Darkness falls across the land....
The midnight hour is close at hand...
Creatures crawl in search of blood...
To terrorize y'all's neighborhood...

Yes, the autumnal season has fallen upon us again, and we must once more offer up fealty to the darkling forces of death and decay. As symbolized by 4-year olds dressing as fairy princesses and Spider-Man in order to over-sugar themselves into hyperactivity.

But never mind that, we're here to gather 'round the campfire for scary stories!

The Night of Michael Meyers: Halloween II (1981, 92 minutes) After the immense success the independently produced first Halloween film experienced, it was inevitable that the big studios (in this case, Universal) would jump at the chance to produce a sequel. Surprisingly, despite the involvement of a big studio and despite John Carpenter turning down the directorial role (though sticking around to write), this sequel managed to retain much of the atmosphere and classic silent menace of the original film, while still moving the story forward. Acting more like a second-act continuation than a stand-alone story, the sequel picks up three minutes before the end of the previous film, as Dr. Loomis (Donald Pleasance in his most iconic role) and the police continue their desperate search for the missing Michael Meyers. New plot points walk the tightrope of giving Michael a purpose, while letting him remaining as inexplicable in his motivation as ever. Gorier and faster-moving, lacking only the more iconic moments of the original, this flick stands as one of the most artistically successful slasher sequels I've seen.

Where the Hell is Michael Meyers: Halloween III: Season of the Witch (1982, 98 minutes) In retrospect, one of the most inexplicable film sequels of all time. Carpenter, when conceiving the sequels, intend to make them be a variety of stories centered around Halloween, not focused on any particular story. What's inexplicable is that he thought this would work after having the first two films center on the Meyer's story. The preconceived notions attached to the title proved to be too much momentum, and consequently soured the reception of the third film, the only one unconcerned with that pale-faced killer. While it was given a wide release initially, word of mouth about Meyer's absence and critical reviews destroyed the film's box office take and it was pulled from theaters after only three weeks. This is a pity, as, taken on its own, the film isn't particularly bad. Essentially a Halloween-centered corporate conspiracy flick with trappings of magic and vaguely-defined paganism, it has a nice set of genuinely gruesome set pieces, startling reveals, and a sequence that legitimately creeps me out. A laughably absurd new-age ending vies with the most irritating advertising jingle ever composed to be the film's low point, but even those have a kitschy charm. Weirdly, the film gives me an amateurish Cronenburg vibe... something like a cross between Scanners and Videodrome.

WARNING: Seriously, that commercial jingle is maddening. And you hear it a lot.

We've dabbled around in the famed and classy for too long. It's time we get back to the nastier, gritter roots of the genre with some cheap, schlocky crap entertainment. Plus, I was given a challenge of sorts. So this week I introduce you to one of the odder corners of crap cinema... homelessploitation!


The Body in the Sewer: C.H.U.D. (1984, 88 minutes) Oh, the infamy. Perhaps the ultimate in mid-80's schlock cinema, this movie's title has become a watchword for silly rubber-monster Saturday-night matinee fare. Which makes it all the more surprising that it's a pretty enjoyable flick. It's essentially a creature feature with a healthy dose of social commentary speaking on the plight of the NY homeless & mentally disturbed shortly after the closing of the private mental health facilities. Add in the filthy, run-down setting of the no-go areas of 80's New York, some labyrinthine sewer tunnels, and the requisite astonishingly evil authority figure. Despite the cliches, the film is well paced, has a couple good set-pieces, the characters are well developed, and it keeps the monster reveals to an effective minimum. this is also an early outing for veteran actors John Heard and Daniel Stern (the latter best known as the narrator for "the Wonder Years"). Inspired a single sequel "C.H.U.D. 2: Bud the Chud" which was probably a comedy-zombie flick that got lost and mislabeled.

The Mind in the Gutter: Street Trash (1987, 91 minutes) Wow. A poverty-row picture expanded from a short made by NY film school students and shot mostly at the Director's Uncle's salvage yard, this flick does it's level best to be as filthy, depraved, insulting, and offensive as possible with practically no money, slipshod directing, and terrible actors. While it follows the exploits of a crew of homless ruled over by a shell-shocked Vietnam vet, the weirdly structured (the infamously best scene, the poster-featured full-body-melt on a toilet, happens in the first ten minutes) flick breaks up any semblance of a plot with racist, sexist, gory, disgusting, or downright insulting detours, making it rather infamous even in cult cinema circles. (The film's most famous invention, though, is the bright-blue or green or yellow tempera-paint character "melts"... so don't worry too much about the gore level.) Perhaps it's best summed up by the director commentary, when he said "we were so proud to get R.L. Ryan, the famous Troma alumni, to be in our film."

WARNING: I seriously suspect the only reason I'm even considering the latter flick is because I haven't seen it in a year or two. It's a juvenile film trying to offend everyone. Be warned. Oh, and remember Black Sheep and Feast? Yep, again.

Decisions, decisions. With Halloween coming up, It's especially important that I get y'all properly in the mood for the spookiest of holidays... but I'm having some trouble putting together a nicely balanced double feature. Pairings are either too awful or using up our best titles all at once. Fortunately, we've still got one of the "big names" left to introduce... one of the most evocative names in the whole modern genre. And coincidentally coinciding with yet another Hollywood remake. So, without further ado; Sweet Dreams.

The Night Terrors: A Nightmare on Elm Street (original, 1984, 91 minutes) I've introduced y'all to Leatherface, Michael, and Jason. There's only Freddy left to round out the classic four horsemen. An amazingly fecund property initially, a total of five sequels followed the original over the next decade (the 6th sequel and "vs." film came after a considerable break), and Freddy Krueger's infamous bladed glove, hat, and striped sweater became just as much a part of horror iconography as the Voorhees hockey mask. While perhaps tamer than the cheap, viciously sadistic and sociopathic films Wes Craven had established himself with (Last House on the Left and The Hills Have Eyes), don't underestimate the nasty impact this film had on the teen audience of the 80's. The unique concept and shadowy, creepy presentation more than made up for a weak third act, ensuring a long life to it's infamous killer. Most people today remember Freddy as the chatty, punning carnival-barker like figure he became in the later sequels; like a slightly more vicious "Beetlejuice." Be warned, this does not hold true for the original film. In his debut he was downright terrifying and, ironically, gave out more than his fair share of nightmares to the actual audience members, crediting the film with rejuvenating the horror genre during a time when the other properties were wallowing in redundancy.

The Fugue Fantasy: Nightmare Detective (aka. Akumu Tantei, 2006, 106 minutes) Warning: NOT A BAD MOVIE, but a very chronologically and emotionally confusing one. An odd bird on a couple of levels, we see several of the traits we're so used to finding in Japanese horror films. No long-haired creepy little girls this time out, but we do find subversive, untrustworthy technology (cell phones), an obsession with loneliness and isolation in the increasingly crowded Japanese culture, the ever present "psychics," and, most disturbingly, a cultural obsession with suicide. Framed initially as a cop-drama investigating a series of surprisingly enthusiastic suicides, it moves into a more personal drama framed around the investigating detective and her motley colleagues. Employing sequences of bewildering scene transitions that can frequently loose the audience (perhaps slight cultural disconnects keep an American audience from keeping up), it nevertheless kept my interest to the degree that, by the three-quarters mark, I was still uncertain where the story was going. (That practically never happens anymore.) Unfortunately, a deeply contemplative philosophical discussion (in the midst of a bloody knife fight) at the end and intentionally esoteric symbology cements the film's overwhelmingly "emo" attitude and cheapens some of the movie's strong points down to adolescent whining. Nonetheless, an interesting culture lense to view the story concept through.

Hokay everyone, moving forward on the "Plan 9 from Outer Space" Rifftrax plan:

I've recieved definite "yes"s from the following:

Me
Jandi
Ray
Leslie
Casey
Hil

Still plenty of time for more of y'all to join in, just let me know before Thursday noon so Jandi knows how many of those paper credit cards to print out.

The time does appear to be fixed at 7:30, as it's a single screening, and every venue has the 7:30 as the only showtime.

According to their little search thing, the closest theaters to my place are (in order)

Hollywood 24 @ I-85 (the purple monstrosity)
Perimiter Point 10 (2 exits down 400 outside of 285)
North Point 8 (a further 2 exits down 400)
AMC Barret commons 24 (down 75 past the 575 split)

I'm guessing one of those first two is the best choice, since they get exponentially distant with the third and fourth options.

What say everyone? I'm defaulting to the purple monstrosity unless people say the other is better.

(Incidentally, here's the list of participating theaters: http://www.ncm.com/FathomContent/PDF/Participating%20Theatres%20RiffTrax%20ENC.pdf)

The flick should let out by 9:30, at which point people are welcome to further gather at my place. Maybe we'll just round out the night with a screening of "Manos: The Hands of Fate." Or maybe I'm not that cruel...

Oh! And here's the movie summary for Plan 9 that I wrote up way the hell back on Movie Night #7:

The Horrible: Plan 9 From Outer Space (1959, 80 minutes, b&w). OK, look, I don't own Manos. But instead of that, let me offer up what may be the most famous bad movie of all time. "Plan 9" was... it was Ed Wood. His "greatest" achievement. This movie is so bad, they made movies about how bad it was. The script is literally laughable, the story incomprehensible, the actors can't act... it's like the real Garth Merenghi's Dark Places. I literally just finished watching the thing for the first time. It hurts. In the opening scene I had a psychotic break and thought one of the characters was getting a shovel to club the scriptwriter with. It's so bad that I may defer to a different flick if we don't get enough people to ridicule the thing and soften the blow.

Believe it or not, we may be going on another field trip. Turns out Jandi and Raymond have another twenty free movie tickets to get through by the end of October, and they'd like our help in spending them.

Further, the prospective flick is a one-night-only show: the Rifftrax presentation of Ed Wood's defining film: "Plan 9 from Outer Space" which is being re-broadcast this Thursday from their live show a couple weeks ago. For those of you unfamiliar with Rifftrax, they're a company that makes comedy alternate audio tracks. You purchase the audiotrack from their website, and then play it simultaneously with your copy of the movie, so it can provide satirical commentary on the film. You may be familiar with their crew: about half of the writers and cast from the cult bad-movie show, Mystery Science Theater 3000! This is apparently a promotional stunt to promote their site, but it must be one of their better commentaries if they're gonna broadcast it across the country. The film, the infamous "Plan 9" is one of the most celebrated bad films in all of cinema, so Mike and the bots will have more than enough material to work from.

So I'm taking another headcount: how many of y'all would be interested? The only catch is that it doesn't appear to be playing at the Parkway Pointe where we met up last time. The participating theaters are the North Point 8, The Perimiter Pointe, the Hollywood 24 (@I-85), Barrett Commons 24, Discover Mills 18, and the Savannah Stadium 10. Being a one shot show, there's also only one option for time: 7:30. (At least at the one theater I checked.... I'll check the others tomorrow.) I know that might be too early for a lot of y'all, so let me know if you can't make it. On the other hand, that might give us enough time to screen a second film at my place after it lets out.

Hokay, kinda in the midst of a lot of stuff (it's like moving in all over again), but I've gotta take a few minutes off to give y'all the movies for this week.

This week, another object lesson in good scary cinema, vs. what hollywood makes today. In this case, upon the canvas of the classic ghost story.

The Ghastly Pallor: The Legend of Hell House (1973, 95 minutes) Another contribution by the grandmaster of horror, Richard Matheson (author of the original "I am Legend"), this magnificent take on the classic haunted house story has been toned down quite a bit from the original novel. Which will really mean something to you once you've seen the film. Transplanted from the novel's location in Maine (in order to accomodate the British cast), the conversion is accomplished well enough that you'd never have thought it could take place anywhere but that ancient and foggy isle. The final film of veteran British horror film director James H. Nicholson (most famous for The Abomnible Dr. Phibes), and starring no lesser lights than Peter Bowles and Rodd McDowall, the film not only explores the standard set of creepy cliches that abound within ancient homes, but quickly moves beyond such tropes into more direct menace... startlingly violent scenes and transgressive themes threaten the lives and sanity of the small group of investigators, building to an odd, almost nonsensical anti-climax that somehow still works, for all of it's out-of-left-field nature.

Warning: While not directly misogynistic in the way of the more extreme offerings from the 70's, the film is one of the most condescendingly chauvanistic that I've ever seen.

The Pale Imitation: The Haunting (remake, 1999, 113 minutes) Reasonable individuals may disagree, but when I saw this particular film in the theaters, it struck me as perhaps the pinnacle of the produced-by-committee, drowned in CGI, un-scary triumph of pabulm over quality. It's easy to trot out anecdotal notes about the film's problems, picking on this or that detail, but that doesn't really present the argument properly. Essentially, this was a remake of one of the most classic haunted house films ever made: a master's course in one movie about how to build and sustain suspense, and how the unseen is always more terrifying than the seen. Hollywood, in remaking this classic, didn't have any idea how to replicate these basic storytelling skills, and, in typical fashion, just turned everything up to 11 with CGI attacking beds and ridiculous set-pieces where everything is bigger, and therefore better than the original. Actual callbacks to the original are simply hilarious in their inept aping. Starring Catherine Zeta-Jones and Liam Neeson in their most forgettable roles ever, the film actually features two main characters who flee the film before it gets underway.

Well, the flooding came back a bit worse and I ended up having to disconnect my computer. That plus site blockage at work means few posts are likely here for a while (using my friend's computer upstairs).

For those who didn't see, there was a significant change in movie night plans this week. Since my place is full of all the crap that was in my storage room, we're going on another field trip: we're gonna catch "Surrogates" at 9:30 at the AMC Parkway Pointe tomorrow. Folks are welcome to join (meeting at the nearby Borders beforehand) but gimmie a call first: we're trying to arrange something nifty and need an accurate headcount for it.

For the obvious reasons (convention), there will be no movie night this coming Thursday. After the convention is over, however, I look forward to getting back onto a regular schedule of screenings...

As y'all might guess, this is a particularly busy couple of weeks for me. Between D*C last weekend and AWA the weekend after next, I'm somewhat short on time and energy. (Hence this very late announcement.) Even worse, I've only just found out that I have a meeting fairly early on Friday morning which kind of excludes the possibility of running flicks late into the night.

Therefore, we're going to have to compromise with the presentation this week. (As Calvin says, "a compromise is a solution where no one is happy.") We'll just screen one flick, starting 8:00-8:15, instead of the usual double feature, and let everyone get to bed at a reasonable hour. To make up for it, I'm going to disinter a true cinematic classic that I've been mulling over for quite a while; something of a challenge for this crowd as well, for reasons that should be rather obvious...

The Music of the Night: Nosferatu: eine Symphonie des Grauens (1922, 94 minutes) This F.W.Murnau-lensed, silent, black and white pinnacle of early German expressionist film remains one of the most iconic vampire films in history. The creepy, long-fingered rodent-faced Count Orlock (played by the pseudonominous Max Schreck) is second only to the 1931 Bela Lugosi "Dracula" image from Universal pictures. (By some counts, it is in fact the first vampire movie, though this is debatable.) A far cry from the romantic figure of today's "glittery" Vampires or Anne Rice's aristocratic Casanovas, it could be argued that Shreck's hideous visage and creeping mannerisms are the best representation of the xenophobia-inspiring boogieman outlined in Stoker's most famous work. Apparently Stoker's estate thought it was close enough, as the film, being an unlicensed adaptation of "Dracula," was successfully sued by Stoker's widow for copyright infringement shortly after its release. The lawsuit wiped out the Prana film studio, for which Nosferatu had been their first picture. In addition, the court ordered that all copies of the film be destroyed. Fortunately, the film had already been distributed, and a bare few copies survived the culling to be passed down to us today. (Supposedly only one original copy of the film remains.) While recognizable as the Dracula story, it is heavily edited, removing multiple characters, and beginning the tradition of never ever ending in the manner described in the book. While the special effects are easily recognized as primitive camera tricks by today's savvy audiences, there should be enough creepy atmosphere to satisfy a receptive audience.

WARNING: Silent film. On the other hand, you have my permission to throw stuff at me if I start shushing anyone. (Just gotten to be a habit at this point.)

Hey everyone,

Took a look at my schedule for the coming week and don't see how I could manage a movie night this Thursday. D*C starts this weekend, and I'll be doing my typical pilgrimage out there on Thursday evening to purchase an early ticket. No idea how long the lines will be or how long I'll be waiting (depends mostly on how stable their computer systems are this year), so can't plan on being at home for the usual screening.

Sorry all! I'll try to make it up to ya on the weekend between D*C and AWA...

(Removed previous entry. Sorry about that, nerves getting to me.)

Much as I would have enjoyed looking for something appropriate to movie night #69 (hmmm.... maybe "Teeth"), this week we have something even better planned! It's the long awaited field trip for movie night! Yes, we're making the trek out to the Atlanta Underground Film Festival (Be careful visiting that link, something wonky in its formatting keeps crashing the page for me.) for their infamous "horror shorts" segment. This will require some coordination.

First off, I'd thought initially that it was taking place at the "Plaza," which was a mistake. The film fest is actually taking place at the Midtown Art Cinema, which is the place Carl was initially thinking of. Directions are given here. In short, it's the theater on Monroe behind the Trader Joe's. For those who know the area, on Ponce de Leon, take the first right after the Zestos that comes after the shopping area with the Borders and the Home Depo. The theater marquee will be on your right.

The showing begins at 8:00, so y'all try and make it to the theater by at least 7:45. Anyone who stops by my place by 7:15, we'll carpool out there (I'll drive) and back to my place afterwards. List price for attendance is $8.00, and I'll happily subsidize $5 of that for each of y'all who make it out there. Gimmie a call if you're lost and I promise I'll hand you to someone who knows how to give directions better than me.

The Theater Popcorn: Altar (2008, 18 minutes) Of especial interest is the participation of our own Nightowl Studio's short film "Alter," a surreal, comedic, grotesque contemplation of the human condition and the nature of relationships, starring our own Andrew Jenner and directed by our own Nathan Bezner. Everyone come down and cheer this film on to its inevitable triumph over those other, lesser films.

The horror block's showing is scheduled to end by 9:30, after which we'll head back to my place, for...

The Chewing Gum Under the Seats: The Room (2003, 99 minutes) No joke, the first "user comment" about this film I saw on imdb was "This film is like getting stabbed in the head." A new-ish, legendarily awful, film, it was apparently used as an April Fool's joke on Adult Swim, demonstrating exactly how much that organization hates their audience. A... romance? melodrama? comedy? so completely wretched it apparently outdoes "Southland Tales" within the first ten minutes. This is also something of a unique opportunity; Nate's said he'll bring a copy down, but I'm not going to be able to preview it ahead of time. That's right; you get to see ME blindsided by cinematic awfulness like I normally bludgeon y'all with.

WARNING: I don't know how to warn y'all, since I haven't seen this film. But the reports are of really spectacular badness. There's been talk of using this thing to start the next Rocky Horror trend...

ALSO: Check out the AUFF's page for their other screening blocks. There might be something else there you'd be interested in, and I like to encourage support of independent film in the city. They've got two animation blocks I'm gonna try to make.

Almost forgot to put up the announcement for this week. I'd been saving this pair with the hopes of a BBQ night to go with, but understandable circumstances (selling a house) mean our butcher (from the night we showed Shawn of the Dead) hasn't been able to stoke up the smoker in quite a while.

Nevertheless, the movies for this week should whet your appetite well enough on their own. This week we're venturing into realms of darkness and clausterphobia. Where casts are cut off from the outside world. We're going... underground.

The Locked Karabiner: The Descent (2005, 99 minutes) Little known fact; I find few things in the world more terrifying than caving. The utter darkness, the thousands of tons of dirt overhead, the slow drip-drip-drip from unknown sources. This may be why I found this film to be so effective in spooking me, but I suspect no shortage of skill on the director's part as well. In what turns into an intense psycological analysis of the main characters as their tightly-knit group begins falling apart under the strain of unreasonable circumstances (with more than a note or two of similarity with The Blair Witch), an "extreme sports" group of women weekenders find themselves in far, far over their heads. An unreliable leader gets them trapped, cock-sure attitudes lead to injuries, and a group of long-time friends simply begin to disintegrate. A tense, exhausting trial of a movie that pulls few punches, with an odd gender-studies dynamic at work beneath the surface. (This was the real breakout film for Niel Marshal, whose only previous work of note was "Dog Soldiers"... a flick we'll get to eventually.)

The Loose Belay: The Cave (2005, 97 minutes) Little known fact; the only thing I find more terrifying than caving is cave-diving. Fortunately, this film is dressed up with the obligatory Hollywood hyperbole and silliness, so there's little chance of it freaking me out. Unlike the stark, relatively low-buget work (not to mention the more naturalistic performances) of the previous film, this film is full of CGI, bombastic character stereotypes, and just enough scientific monster silliness to sate fans of the American Godzilla. A perfectly adequate popcorn flick, it really only falls short in comparison with the previous film, cracking jokes and adding predictable kills where the previous film left only silent tension. Again, an unreliable leader leaves our actors trapped... cock-sure attitudes lead to injuries... what a difference a director makes.

Hokay, almost on time this week! And that's a good thing, because if I wait too long this time it might get... overdone.

This week is something of a guest-host week: it's Jandi's birthday this Thursday and she asked if she could make some requests as to the lineup. So this week we're celebrating the fine culinary arts!

The Gourmand: Delicatessen (1991, 99 minutes) This odd little film seems to make a particular challenge out of being difficult to categorize. Part black comedy, part horror, part absurd, surrealist outing, mix in farce and outright slapstick, garnish with a sci-fi concept, flavor with a touch of social commentary, all drenched in the au jus of a sappy misfit romance and serve on a kaiser roll. What more could we expect from this earlier work by the director of "Amelie"? In mood and setting, it feels like a clausterphobic (all within a single apartment complex) mix of "Brazil," "Dark City," and "The Island of Lost Children" (or, possibly, "The Triplets of Bellville" with it's strangely compacted absurdist conspiracy). While we'll reach a French-themed movie night soon enough, this film pre-dates the current wave of startlingly brutal violence from that country, and restrains almost all of the violence off-screen, leaving center stage to the rubber-faced Dominique Pinon, a veteran actor who, unfortunately, is really only known to US audiences as "that guy in the motorized wheelchair" from Alien: Ressurection. (Much of his early portfolio has never been imported to the US.) Also contains one of the most hilariously Rube-Goldbergian endings I've ever seen.

WARNING: Subtitles. On the other hand, we'll know pretty quick if I've screwed up the aspect ratio again.

The Gourmet: Hannibal Rising (2007, 121 minutes) Continuing somewhat with the French "secret" theme this week, we come to this, the prequel to all of the Hannibal Lecter stories. Unfortunately, I've little to say about it, as I haven't seen this film myself, though I confess a good deal of curiosity after the details I've heard. The bar is certainly set high for this film, which attempts to give the background of one of fiction's most sinister, nearly supernatural serial killers, and will certainly pressure Gaspard Ulliel, whether he's attempting to prefigure either Anthony Hopkins or Brian Cox. We'll all have to judge whether or not he meets the challenge.

OK, in my defense I was totally planning on posting the announcement yesterday, but the internet went out at home for almost the entire night.

...that and the process of re-writing a grant is currently making life a living hell for me and anyone I come into contact with. Particularly my boss.

I actually didn't really want to do the following pair-up, but I've had no time to think of anything better. Not that there's anything particularly awful about these two (the "bad" isn't really all that bad at all... especially in comparison with the recent fare), I just think that each could've been more appropriately paired with something else. (And it's a return to zombies a bit quicker than intended.) They're entirely different genres, after all. Undead vs. giant monster... social collapse vs. "nature attacks." In fact, about the only thing they have in common is their country of origin...

Ladies and gents, this week we're going down under!

(Hell, this may touch off a series of "country-themed" double features... I've had a pair of French films and Spanish films in the sidelines... and y'all are far from unfamiliar with Japanese and Italian-themed nights. Another Kiwi night might be hard though.)

At the least, I'm fairly certain it'll irritate Raymond, and that's always amusing. :)

The Outback: Undead (2003, 104 minutes) One particularly vivid memory of my misspent youth was waking up midway through my first viewing of "Undead" and seeing what I can only describe as a "zombie bird-strike on a cessna." (Note it was not a zombie bird, but a zombie bird-strike.) I would have tracked it down sooner, but I think I'd half-convinced myself that the event was a complete hallucination. This film is one of the original "little Aussie flicks that could," and to my mind it absolutely retains the "authenticity" of a low-budget classic. The whole thing was funded by the directors along with their family and friends, while the special effects (which came out much better than they should have, but still have the air of a British TV special) were assembled on home computers over the nine month post-production crawl. Fun-loving in the ridiculous vein of Evil Dead, vicious, and displaying that strange obsession with gore we last saw on Kiwi night, the real treat of the film is its complete incomprehensibility. Not that the film is badly crafted, but that its central concept was so far out in left field that I, for once, literally couldn't figure out where it was going. This is an occurrence rare enough that I can't remember the last time it happened. (I should note that there's a significant contingent out there that hate this movie... and I totally can't figure out why. For heaven's sake, there's a direct reference to TORGO from MANOS in it.)

The Outback Steakhouse: Rogue (2007, 99 minutes) From indie-cred to the opposite end of the scale. Calling this a bad movie is really a bit of a stretch, but it's fairly evident that the director went to Hollywood, and learned all the wrong things. Romantic side-plot? Check. Stereotype the country? Check. Asshole locals? Check. Complicating a bad situation by everyone uncharacteristically becoming jerks at once? Check. It also has a curious feel of being "made for sale in the US..." it's a film taking place in the Northern Territory, made by an Aussie company as the "big Austrailian horror film of 2007"... and there's this completely uninteresting American tourist (Michael Vartan... who?) right in the middle of it all who somehow becomes the hero when all the locals fall apart. On the plus side, the film's setup is utterly brilliant, and the creature effects are completely stunning; melding hero puppets and CGI as seamlessly as I've ever seen. In theory, these are the makings of a great film. Unfortunately, much of the suspense is undone by the film's weakest point, the utterly cliche'd, stupidest damn characters I've seen in years. "Hey everyone... maybe you shouldn't be standing so close to the water?"