October Horror Challenge 2019 #79: "The Castle of Fu Manchu"

Christopher Lee is  a great actor, and he was in many good movies. This isn't one of them. The Fu Manchu movies are really racist in general, because they have a white actor donning "yelliwface" to pretend to be Asian, but the first few Gu Manchu movies at least had a halfway decent plot going for them. This being the fifth and final Fu Manchu movie, the filmmakers had pretty much given up on all that, because they knew the movie would make money no matter how terrible it was,  I guess.

Like in the other movies in the series, this movie has the evil Fu Manchu threatening to destroy the world. This time he's got a device that forms icebergs in any temperature water, thus crashing ships and killing everyone on them. What a jerk. The movie opens with a scene of a cruise ship crashing into an iceberg and everyone on the ship drowning. Back in 2006, I actually drowned, as in I died and had to be pulled from the water and revived, so ever since then, any movie with scenes of people drowning will freak me out, no matter how terrible it is, so this drowning scene was actually really creepy to me.

Any of the scenes that take place in the water are similarly effective, but the rest of the movie is really boring. It's a bunch of guys from Scotland Yard arguing with each other about how to stop Fu Manchu, while Cristopher Lee frowns and tries to look menacing. He mostly succeeds, because Christopher Lee, but even he can't save this movie from its own silliness.

The plot doesn't even make sense. Fu Manchu has kidnapped a dying scientist and is keeping him alive in order to further his plan to destroy the world with his machine, but I never really understood how that was supposed to work. Something about taking over Istanbul in order to control their supply of opium because his evil death machine needs opium to run, and I guess the scientist has knowledge that Fu Manchu needs, but I don't get how he expects the guy to give him the information. He keeps injecting him with something,  so maybe it's a truth serum to get him to give up the information. I don't know why I'm even trying to make sense of the plot, because the people who made the movie didn't do that. It's just a bunch of pseudoscientific hooey with Christopher Lee being evil and the good guys trying to stop him. Not a great movie by any means.

October Horror Challenge 2019 #78: "Sidehackers"

I blame Michael Pataki for me watching this movie. Amazon has lots of obscure little grindhouse flicks floating around for Halloween this year, but I picked this one specifically because Michael Pataki was in it and I've seen a lot of his other movies. This one is...perhaps not his best.

The movie is supposed to be about sidehackers, motorcycle racers who sit in a sidecar and help the main driver steer during a race. Really, though, it's about two racers who start out competing against each other in races, then start hating each other so much they start coming after each other in real life. Their feud eventually turns violent and deadly.

The fight scenes are cool, but the rest of 4th he movie is painfully boring,  even the motorcycle race scenes, and I don't know how they managed to make those boring. Plus there's a romantic subplot that gives one of the bikers a motive for revenge, but the characters aren't drawn very well, so it was hard for me to care much about it.

Michael Pataki is a pretty good actor normally, but he's really over the top in this movie. I totally want to give away the ending of the movie, because it's actually pretty cool, but I won't spoil it since it's definitely the best part of the movie and pretty much the only redeeming value the movie has.

October Horror Challenge 2019 #77: "Earth Versus the Spider"

I've said this before,  but spiders creep me out, so almost any horror movie with spiders will be spooky fun for me as long as it's at least marginally competent. I try to squeeze in at least one spider-themed horror movie a year because I know I'll enjoy them. I don't think I've seen this one before, so I was excited to check it out.

This movie is about some students who go looking for their missing friend and find a giant spider that's chowing down on local townspeople. The spider is almost impossible to kill, but the people fight it and try to kill it, and the genius scientist in this movie thinks it's dead so he starts studying its body, only to discover that it's still alive and now royally pissed off. I kinda don't blame it. I'd be pissed too.

I realize that characters in horror movies have to be dumb in order to advance the plot, but the characters in this movie seem especially stupid. If you find out there's a giant spider attacking your town, wouldn't you make sure it was dead before moving its body to the local school to study it? And why would you just assume there's only one giant spider and not make sure there aren't more out there?

Also, wouldn't you like, call in the army or something instead of leaving like two local cops in charge of guarding the giant spider and hunting it down once it escapes? And I don't care how cool my new bracelet was, I would not go back to the lair of a giant spider to look for it if I lost it, for fuck's sake! So yeah, this movie is dumb, but the spider skeeved me out, so I had fun watching it in spite  of its flaws.

October Horror Challenge 2019 #76: "Monster a Go-Go"

It's impossible for me to take this movie seriously with this title. WTF were the filmmakers thinking? And ok, you can argue that the movie maybe wasn't meant to be taken seriously, that it was supposed to be silly and cheesy and fun, but if that was the goal, the tone of the movie is all wrong. It's full of long, boring speeches about humanity and what makes a monster, and blah blah blah.

Whether we're supposed to take it seriously or not, the movie definitely takes itself way too seriously, and that's no fun. There's more shots of people driving around or walking around caves at night with voice over narration telling us that they're looking for the monster than anything else, and that's about as interesting as watching paint dry.

It's a shame, because the plot of the movie sounds interesting. An astronaut returns from a mission but he's not quite human anymore, and he starts killing people with radiation poisoning. What a jerk. I wish I could watch a good version of this movie made by competent filmmakers, because I bet that would be cool.

October Horror Challenge 2019 #75: "Bride of the Monster"

Maybe I'm just desensitized from watching so many bad movies, but this movie actually didn't seem that bad to me. I mean, it's silly and over-the-top and all, but I actually didn't mind watching it. It's certainly better than "Plan 9 from Outer Space," which is another Ed Wood flick.

Bela Lugosi plays a disgraced scientist who lives in a secluded estate and performs experiments on people who are unlucky enough to find themselves in his clutches. After a string of such disappearances and sightings of a "monster" in the area, a reporter goes looking for a story, and she gets caught up in the scientist's evil plot.

There's a ridiculous looking monster, and the special effects are terrible, but Bela Lugosi manages to exude menace, so I liked his performance, and the movie actually has a halfway decent plot, at least when compared with "Plan 9." Like I said, I might just be desensitized, but I didn't mind watching this one.

October Horror Challenge 2019 #74: "Time of the Apes"

I didn't really get this movie. It's very over-the-top and silly, and I wondered why the acting and characterization were so...immature, for want of s better word. Now that I went looking for a poster for the movie to include with this review, though, I realize that this was a kid's horror movie, so it wasn't aimed at adults, and that actually makes more sense.

The movie is about some kids visiting their uncle at his lab where he works with animals, and something goes wrong, so the kids and the lab assistant take shelter in some cryogenic tanks, but when they emerge from the tanks they've been transported to an alternate reality where the world is ruled by apes and they want to kill and/or imprison all humans.

Yeah, it doesn't make much sense, and it's ridiculous, but it's kind of "Planet of the Apes" for kids, I guess. The action is pretty cartoonish, but i probably would have liked it better if I were a kid.

October Horror Challenge 2019 #73: "The Red Shoes"

I'm taking a short break to revisit some Hlloween specials I loved when I was a kid. These stories are part of why I love horror movies to this day. This is more of a "girl learns a lesson from a ghost and from a cursed pair of shoes" than "girl gets decapitated," more like "A Christmas Carol" with ghosts that actually want to help people. Plus it has great music, beautiful chalk-drawing style animation, and the voice of Ossie Davis narrating. What's not to love?

The original story of the red shoes is about a ballerina who becomes obsessed and is tortured by a pair of shoes and a curse. There have been lots of good movies made from this story, but it's not the most kid friendly idea, so this version takes a different path. Two little girls are best friends, in love with the ballet, one girl moves away and the friendship is broken by pride and greed, until some "cursed" shoes and a ghost from the past straighten everyone out and make it right.

I loved this movie when I was a kid. I checked out the VHS from the library (yes, I'm old) and we practically wore out the tape, we watched it so much. I was excited to see Amazon had it for sale, so I bought the digital version, and I watch it every once in awhile. It's a great reminder of the importance of friendship, how greed can turn people into monsters, and why it's important to remember who you are and where you came from, no matter where you end up. Definitely worth watching again and again.