2011 October Horror Movie Challenge Movie 52: Demonic (2006)

This is another little-seen movie, but there is a lot to recommend it (in one particular campy bonus, we get to see Tom Savini as a creepy weirdo who lives in the woods and kidnaps stranded travelers from the side of the road, dragging them back to his shack in the woods and holding them captive for some unknown purpose). The movie opens with two people making out in their car in the woods who are suddenly attacked by a flock of beautiful, nubile, naked, female demons who like to make out with the women and then feast on the men (what a way to go!) The special effects aren't bad for this being a low-budget horror flick, the acting is passable (I've seen far worse) and the atmosphere is pretty as the movie steadily builds to a conclusion that, while I saw it coming ahead of time, was a fitting ending to a nasty little movie, and I really appreciated it. It's not the best movie ever made or anything, but it's a fun, gory way to spend an hour and a half, so I dug it.

2011 October Horror Movie Challenge Movie 51: Uninvited (1993)

This is one of those movies where i watch it and then get angry that I've never heard of it before. Stuff like "Avia: Vampire Hunter" gets a DVD release and this doesn't? What is going on here? This is a low-budget affair, but the actors are all kicking ass and taking names despite the low budget, the few special effects there are work well and add to the creepiness of the story, and it has a cool plot that is well-executed. In short, there are TONS of movies way more terrible than this that have gotten a good DVD release, and this is shoved into the middle of one of those 10-and-12-movie packs with a bunch of other movies no one will ever see, and thus no one will ever see this, either, and it deserves a lot better.

This is a mixed-genre movie; a combination western/horror movie, where a group of poor settlers in the old west travel to the site of a gold mine hoping to find gold and use it to buy themselves a better life. There's a preacher who wants to use the gold to build a church, there's a husband and wife who want to start fresh in some other place away from the problems that plagued their marriage, there's a man who lost everything in his life including his faith and thus became cold and angry and mean and violent, there's a woman forced into prostitution to survive on her own who wants to buy herself a new life. All these people are already haunted before they even get to the site of the mine, which is littered with dead bodies and supposedly protected by a curse because it's the site of a burial ground. The people have traveled too far to go back now, so they disregard the dead bodies and foreboding feeling of doom and the nightly nightmares of violent murder and they start to dig. As time goes on, they find more trouble than gold, and they start to come apart at the seams. It's a creepy story that's handled well, and for the life of me I can't understand why more people haven't seen it, but I'm glad that I got the chance to see it and I'll definitely be checking it out again (and you should, too). Here are two of my favorite quotes from the movie to tide you over until you see it for yourself:

"Every time I see a man like you alive and well, I marvel at the patience of God."

"Piss on you and your God!"

2011 October Horror Movie Challenge Movie 50: The Haunting of Rebecca Verlaine

This movie came in one of those 12-movie packs that usually only contain one movie that's actually watchable, and I bought it because I wanted to watch one of the other movies in it, so the "watchable" spot had already been taken by another movie and thus I had low expectations for this movie. Understand that coming in, and you might see why I plan to give this movie such a glowing review. It might be a bad movie, but I came into it with such low expectations that it had nowhere to go but up from there, so I was pleased with how much I enjoyed it. There's a lot of hate for this movie floating around on the internet, but for my money (all $5 of it) this movie isn't half bad and is definitely worth checking out.

I was excited to see this movie when I discovered that it had been made by Olaf Ittenbach, because while his movies are often bad, they are also gory and entertaining to watch, so his involvement was a plus for me where it might have been a big minus for others. Another bonus is that the actress who plays Rebecca Verlaine in this movie can actually act, so it's not painful to watch her for an hour and a half. As with all Ittenbach movies, the gore is excessive but very well done considering the film's low budget, and while the plot is a little ridiculous (especially at the end where the main bad guy stands around and gives a speech detailing how and why he did all these evil things, and it was just like watching an episode of Scooby Doo, and I expected him to say "I would have gotten away with it if it weren't for you meddling kids!" at any moment) but the opening credit sequence, where a bunch of people are massacred by killers dressed as clowns, is extremely creepy and well done. And really, the plot isn't THAT bad (I've seen MUCH worse) and it's extra fun if you can sit around with your friends and make fun of it while it's all happening. Suffice it to say that this isn't a film masterpiece, but it isn't a masterpiece of shit, either, so I definitely recommend it if you're a fan of low-budget horror movies with a lot of gore.

2011 October Horror Movie Challenge Movie 49: Amityville II: The Possession

Why are there two movie posters for this movie, you may ask. Is Lillian getting senile in her old age? Yes, but there's a method to my madness here. A few years ago, I saw the first 90 minutes of this movie, and I loved them. I was haunted by their imagery, creeped out and uncomfortable by the skin-crawling events of the film, and ready to declare this movie a horror classic. The movie I was watching skipped and froze after the first 90 minutes, so I never got to see the rest, so I was excited to watch this movie for the challenge this year and figure out what I missed. Oh boy was I ever in for a surprise.

See, the first 90 minutes of this film ARE pretty brilliant, and creepy, and well-made, and all those other things I thought. Then, after 90 minutes, this movie ENDS...and is still inexplicably on for another 45 minutes after that. Another boring, tedious, stupid, ridiculous 45 minutes full of so many plot holes and leaps of logic and cheap looking "special" effects that I was literally yelling at my screen by the time the damn thing FINALLY ended. So the GOOD poster above? The creepy, haunting poster that tells the story of the family who lived in this house until they were attacked by an evil that corrupted them all and sucked them right into hell? That poster is for the first hour and a half of this movie; the good part. the second poster, which is hokey looking and full of special effects that look like they were made by a preschool class? That poster represents the second part of this movie, the part that sucks and ruins what could have been a great horror movie.

I'm not exaggerating here, folks. I wondered why so many people seemed to hate on this movie, and I watched the first 90 minutes, and I was blown away. The family is haunted before they even move into the house, with an abusive, overbearing father and a harried mother trying to hold everything together and a teenage daughter who is confused by her feelings for her older brother, and an older brother who is chafing under the stranglehold of his father, and a little brother and sister who are caught in the middle. The evil in the house exploits and amplifies the problems this family already has until everyone is in a state of terror, waiting to see what will happen when the other shoe drops. It's grueling to watch this poor family (well, except for the dad, I was ready to jump through the screen and kill him myself) and the family drama is done so well and woven so well with the supernatural happenings that I thought the movie was going to be great.

Then the final act comes and the movie turns into a huge pile of shit. The ending doesn't even make SENSE (I'm fairly certain that if you knock a police officer out with a gun and help a mental patient who is accused of murder escape from the facility where he is being held, that the cops are going to be pissed at you and they're going to come into the house and arrest you and not just take your friend's word when he walks out and says you're not inside). And that's just ONE of the 3923892389289903289329438939183 plot holes that are crammed into the worst 45 minutes of horror film footage ever made. UGH. It so effectively ruins what could have been a good movie that I seriously want to track down the filmmakers and beat them with a brick. I don't care if they made this movie over 30 years ago, they have it coming. Watch this movie and stop playing it after 90 minutes, and you'll enjoy it and think it's one of the best horror movies you've ever seen. Watch any more than that, and your brain will jump out one of your eye sockets and run away screaming. you have been warned.

2011 October Horror Movie Challenge Movie 48: Darkness

I saw this movie twice in theaters when it came out, once dragging my friend Elijah to the bigger city an hour away from here so he could see it, too. I loved this movie and was excited about seeing it, and then I realized that every other horror fan seemed to HATE this movie and went around bashing it every chance they got. I didn't understand it then and I don't understand it now. People told me that I liked this movie once because I didn't know much about horror movies back then, but if I watched it now, I would realize why it was a bad movie and I wouldn't like it anymore. I can unequivocally say this is FALSE, because I watched it last week and loved it just as much then as I did when I saw it years ago. I love this movie, think it's great, and don't really get why other people seem to hate it so much.

Directed by Jaume Balagueró, who has become quite well-known in recent years for his brilliant [REC] films, this movie shows his talent for taking small spaces and common events and turning them on their heads until they become disorienting and frightening. The opening sequence grabs the viewer right from the beginning, as a group of children are kidnapped and brutally murdered, with only one child left alive because he somehow escaped and ran off through the woods, though he has no real memory of what happened to him or the other children. Cut to the present day, where we meet a family slowly coming apart at the seams. Anna Paquin is brilliant here as a teenage girl whose family has uprooted her and moved to Spain, taking her away from all her friends and dumping her in the middle of a country and a culture she doesn't like or understand. Her mother (played by Lena Olin) is cold and distant, basically telling her daughter to get over herself. Her father is suffering from a mysterious illness that causes him to break down under stress and lash out angrily at his family, and her little brother is sullen and quiet, scared of what is happening to his quickly unraveling family and equally terrified of whatever mysterious evil seems to be haunting their new house. Add to that a creepy old house filled with shadows and secrets, and you have the ingredients for a perfectly chilling haunted house story, and that's exactly what this movie delivers. Apparently it's not for everyone, but I love it, and the memory of it still occasionally haunts me on dark nights when the shadows in my room seem especially menacing.

2011 October Horror Movie Challenge Movie 47: Pontypool

This is one of those movies that horror fans raved about so much after it came out, and everyone was telling me "OMG you HAVE to watch Pontypool!!!!!" and I was thinking "WTF does "Pontypool" mean?" I waited almost two years to finally get around to watching this, and I plugged my ears and ran away screaming anytime someone tried to spoil the movie for me, so I really had no idea what to expect. Having said all that, this movie blew me away. It isn't perfect, it has a few glaring flaws, but it's so entertaining and so different and so creative that it absolutely kicked ass and I loved it in spite of whatever flaws it may have had.

For the record, "Pontypool" is the name of a small town in Canada, and the small-town radio host (who used to be a big-time star and now resents working in a tiny town where he has to recite school closings and interview members of the community theater on air) is the star of this movie, along with his boss at the radio station, and a girl who answers phones and does fact-checking for the station. This three-person crew make up the bulk of the action in the movie, as things start to go very wrong in their isolated small town, on the same day a huge blizzard blows in, making their small town even more isolated from the rest of the world. These three actors rock HARD and manage to make the movie enthralling and never boring (which is a huge feat for a movie that takes place almost entirely within one small room). As the day drags on and they get more and more news reports of the strange and terrifying happenings in their town, they start to come unglued (which most people would do in such a situation, so it is totally believable, and we've come to like these characters, so it's hard to watch them fall apart like this). They have no ides what's going on at first, and watching them decipher the clues and figure out how to survive is riveting. This is a movie that takes a relatively old idea and breathes new life into it, making the old seem new again. I won't spoil it for you, so there's no need to plug your ears and run away screaming, but you should run to the video store now and buy or rent this movie so you can watch it, because it's THAT good.

2011 October Horror Movie Challenge Movie 46: Night of the Demons (2010)

After the lackluster experience I had watching the original movie, I was less than excited about this remake, and it really is a pretty bad movie. The acting isn't that great, and do I really need to see a 10 minute long conversation among girlfriends about waxing during which one of them applies aloe to her crotch because the waxing has left uncomfortable burns? I don't object to nudity in movies, but this scene was gross and annoying and pointless, and we didn't even get to see said crotch area. I call foul. Nevertheless, this movie is actually ok, and it's probably better than the original taken as a whole, but the original movie had an opening scene and a closing scene that were just brilliant, and while this remake was better as a whole movie, nothing in this movie approached the brilliance of the opening and closing scene from the original movie. It's not a bad way to kill two hours though, and there's a disgusting scene involving a tube of lipstick that greatly improves upon a scene from the original movie (I'll leave the description of this scene up to your imagination).