October Horror Challenge 2022 #7: "Basket Case (1982)"

I've heard about this movie many times throughout my life. It's a favorite of horror fans, but I've just never gotten around to actually watching it. I did fall asleep during it once but I don't count that (though it made for some really weird dreams). I decided that the challenge this year would be the perfect time to finally check the movie out.

SPOILER ALERT: So this movie is about a boy and his basket. More specifically, it's about a rather normal-looking young man who carries a basket around with him and seeks revenge for an unwanted surgery performed on him as a child that separated him from his deformed conjoined twin, who he now carries around with him in said basket. Hence the title "basket case," get it? The twins communicate telepathically, and they slaughter their way through town, ammassing a respectable body count before they're finished. Will someone be able to stop the killings before it's too late?

I really wish I could go back and watch this movie back before I knew anything about it, before I knew what was in that basket. I bet it would have been really fun to see that reveal without knowing everything that was going to happen. We know from the beginning that SOMETHING is in the basket, simething that seems to be alive, and we see the young man (named Duane) feed it some hamburgers, so it seems to be his pet of some kind at first, but of course we astute viewers already know what it is in the basket, and descriptions of the movie don't even try to keep that a secret anymore and they dont even bother including a spoiler alert like the one I included here, since it's now common knowledge what's in the basket that young Duane is carrying, so there's no reason to try and keep it secret. The movie doesn't reveal what's in the basket for awhile though, and the full story of the origin of the thing in the basket isn't revealed until halfway through the movie. I guess it just would be nice to be surprised by something in the movie without having everythinng spoiled for me.

The stop-motion animation used to create the special effects of the murderous conjoined twin looks pretty hokey now, but they're still pretty cool effects. There's lots of messy gore, and most of the people who get killed are total assholes who deserve it, so it's fun watching them get dispatched in gruesome ways by the deformed brother named Belial. I kind of feel sorry for Belial. He's been hated his entire life and he grew u with only his brother to interact with, and it would seem that what he wants most is to be normal and have a normal life, so he resents anything that his brother has that he can never have, which is why he throws such a huge fit any time his brother gets to enjoy somethinng normal and fun in life that Belial can never have, like a girlfriend. Poor Belial. Anyway, I ended up enjoying this movie, so give it a watch if you've never seen it or if you want to be transported back to a simpler time in slasher cinema.

October Horror Challenge 2022 #6: "Pledge Night"

This movie came out in 1990 (or 1988 if you ask IMDB) and it follows the slasher pattern to a T: someone dies horribly, years later said dead person gets revenge on those who killed him, bodies pile up and a fun time is had by all who watch the madness. I've never seen this movie, but I like slashers, so I expected that I would like it when Shudder informed me of its existence. I try to watch as many slashers as I possibly can because I usually dig them, so I was excited to check this one out. So how does it hold up?

Back in 1960, a fraternity hazing prank goes horribly wrong and a hippie winds up dead. The fraternity is forced off campus in shame for what they've done. Thirty years later, another fraternity is about to celebrate pledge night once again, which seriously pisses off the spirit of the guy who died thirty years ago, so he decides to exact revenge, and before you know it, bodies are piling up left and right. Can those left alive stop the killings before it's too late?

Anthrax did the music for this movie, so the whole thing is driven by good metal music, which is a nice touch. There's not much to say about this one, either. It's the typical hack-and-slash gorefest, though it does throw in a few creative touches, like death by eggbeater. Plus there's some confusion surrounding who is doing the killings because the first few killings are done by one guy, and then the main killer shows up to dispatch the rest, so I don't know if he was supposed to have possessed the first guy or that guy just went crazy and did some of the killings because he thought he'd help out (how thoughtful of him) but either way, there's some fun gore here, some nudity, and some incredibly useless cops who refuse to take a 911 call seriously. It also ends really abruptly like, huh? What just happened? And there's a third act "twist" that doesn't really make much sense, but I guess I shouldn't have been expectling sense from this movie to begin with. All in all not the worst slasher flick I've seen, so it's worth checking out if you're a fan of slashers.

October Horror Challenge 2022 #5: "Tetsuo: The Iron Man"

This is one of those movies I've been hearing about for years that I finally decided to watch today. It's a dark little underground cyberpunk horror flick with severe arthouse leanings, so it was either going to be great or terrible, and I knew that going in but decided to give it a chance anyway. I've been hearing about this movie since I used to read my brother's Fangoria magazines back when I was a teenager (Fangoria is the main horror magazine, so it was how I read about horror movies back in the days before the internet).

The movie is about a "metal fetishist" who is driven insane by the maggots swirling in a wound he created by jamming a metal spike into his flesh. He runs out into the night and is hit by a car driven by a businessman and his girlfriend. They hope to dispose of the body and move on with their lives, but soon the businessman is haunted by strange visions. The visions get worse and worse until he discovers he is now haunted by a strange curse that transforms his flesh into iron.

That description makes the movie sound way more linear and straightforward than it is. The details are all out of order and the events of the film take place at different times, so I had to piece together the events to come up with that description for it to make any sense. Yep, this is one of those art films that doesn't make much sense, at least not for those of us that want our movies to have a beginning, a middle, and an end, in that order. If that's what you're looking for then this movie will probably piss you off, so you should probably avoid it if you know you want your movies to be straightforward.

The movie is basically a collection of artsy-fartsy black and white scenes pieced together and held with duct tape. It's black-and-white with subtitles, and as I mentioned earlier it doesn't make linear sense, so it has a lot of strikes against it for most regular moviegoers in terms of them enjoying the viewing experience. The movie is just plain weird and more of a hidgepodge of weird randomm scenes than an actual movie. I did kind of enjoy a lot of the scenes and the movie builds up a lot of atmosphere and a good sense of impending doom which hangs over the proceedings. It's gross and grungy and dirty, but it wasn't a bad way to kill 62 minutes, and with its short running timme it doesn't run the risk of overstaying its welcome. I dunno, I can dig it.

October Horror Challenge 2022 #4: "The Reef: Stalked"

This is a direct to DVD sequel to the movie "The Reef" which was a pretty good shark film from a few years ago. I tend to like shark films, so when Shudder recommended that I check this movie out, I was all over that suggestion. Sometimes these things turn out well and sometimes they end horribly, So it was a gamble, but I decided to give this movie a chance.

The movie is about a woman who endures a tragedy and decides to take a reef diving trip with friends a year later as a way to heal. Unfortunately, she and her friends soon find themselves fighting for their lives against a great white shark. I hate it when that happens.

Aussie accents are fun. The cute accents are the first thing I noticed about this movie. The second is that the movie doesn't shy away from putting its main character through the ringer. She suffers a horrible loss in the first ten minutes of the movie, which is handled well, and then she gets besieged by a big, mean shark. Bummer. The main character suffers from PTSD bgecause of a traumatic event that we witness at the beginninng of the movie, and as someone who suffers from PTSD and flashbacks, I'd say the way the novie portrays these things is spot on, which I appreciated. I liked the main character, even when she's kind of a jerk to her friends later on in the movie, because I could relate to her struggles and I understood where she was coming from. The movie is really a sequel in name only, since it doesn't have anything to do with the original The Reef (except for those pesky sharks) but like the "in name only" sequel Open Water 2: Adrift, this is an enjoyable movie. I'm scared of drowning, so the fears of the water that this movie induces work for me, and the gore from the shark attacks is pretty well-done. Overall this movie isn't anything to write home about, but I did enjoy the hour and a hald of solid entertainment it provided for me.

October Horror Challenge 2022 #3: "Twitches""

I decided to continue my trend of watching kid-friendly halloween and horror movies by checking out this movie that I've heard a lot about over the years but never gotten the chance to see. It stars Tia ans Tamera Mowry, twin actresses who play twin witches who were separated at birth and reunited by magic on their 21st birthdays to join together and fulfill their birthright as witchy princesses who are the only ones who can stop the evil force called "the darkness" that killed their father back when they were babies.

Finally, one of these kids movies is actually fun for me to watch. I definitely liked this the best of the 3 movies I checked out on this first day of the horror challenge. I like the main actresses, so I didn't mind watching them as they discover their witchy powers and grow into their destiny. There's not much to say about this movie, but it was a cute little flick that was a fun way to kill an hour and a half, and I wouldn't mind checking this out with some kiddos who aren't quite ready for hardcore horror yet. As the movie says near the end, "The opposite of darkness isn't light, it's love."

October Horror Challenge 2022 #2: "Halloweentown"

This is a Disney channel original movie celebrating how much fun Halloween should be, and so I've wanted for years to see it, even though I'm way older than the target audience. The best kids movies can be enjoyed by adults too, after all. That's what I told myself as I pressed the "play" button on this movie, and I hoped for the best (anything has to be better than the gooky mess that was Hocus Pocus 2).

This movie is about a thirteen year old girl named Marnie, who finds out on her thirteenth birthday that she's a witch with a long family history of magic and witchy things (on her momm's side of the family, as her dad was a human). She follows her grandmother through a secret portal into Halloweentown, a magical land that is being tormented by a dark evil that only Marnie and her family can fight. Marnie's mother doesn't want Marnie to follow her witchy destiny, she wants to honor her dead husband's human side of the family, so she is resistent to the idea of Marnie fulfilling her destiny, and this makes for a lot of tensionn throughout the movie. Marnie's mother never even told her she was a witch, and she's spent years trying to hide Marnie's powers from her. Will Marnie's mother comme around and allow Marnie the freedom to be the witch she's meant to be? Will the evil curse that's stalking Halloweentown ever be stopped? Will Marnie's little brother ever stop being a mouthy little twerp and actually help his family save the day?

I feel like Ebenezer Scrooge or the Halloween Grinch right now. This is another movie that I've been wanting to see for a long time that ended up being a huge disappointment. I realize that the movie is for kids, so I'm not exactly the target audience, but as I said before, the best kids movies can be enjoyed by adukts as well, and this just seems too cheesy and silly and not in a fun way but in a depressingly boring way. The effects are dismally low-rent even for a made-for-TV movie, so I wasn't inmpressed. All the ghosts and ghouls and werewolves look like extras in costumes, which un-suspends my disbelief before it even has a chance to get going. I did find the family drama to be intriguing. Marnie's mother pissed me off with her attitude. I get it lady, you want to honor your human husband's memory and traditions, but your magical side of the family is important too, and right now they're under attack by an evil curse that you can help stop, so get over yourself and go help your mom out.

I wasn't kidding about Marnie's little brother, he is really a mouthy little twerp for most of the movie and he spends most of his time getting in the way and trying to get Marnie in trouble. I suppose this is the most realistic aspect of the movie, since that's exactly what a lot of younger siblings would do, but it gets annoying, especially since I was already waiting for the mom to get her head out of her butt and decide to let her daughter fulfil her witchy destiny. This family is frustrating. Overall, once the mother comes around and decides to let her daughter do her own thing it is kind of touching, I just wish the movie weren't so cheesy and silly and obviously low-budget. I'm reminded of movies that I loved growing up, like Mr. Boogety and Bride of Boogety, which were Disney halloween movies that I actually saw when I was a kid and therefore part of the target audience, and I really loved those movies and I dn't remember them being this ridiculous, but that could just be because I was a kid when I first watched them so I didn't see the low-budget crappiness as much as I would as an adult. Though this was definitely better than Hocus Pocus 2 for me, I was still disappointed.

October Horror Challenge 2022 #1: "Hocus Pocus 2"

A lot of people grew up with the original Hocus Pocus as a Halloween staple in their households. Released in 1993, the original Hocus Pocus didn't do so well in theaters, but received a second wind when it was released on video and shown on the Disney Channel over and over again in the following years, so it became a cult classic. I didn't grow up with the movie like most 90s kids did, but I did remember hearing about it and wanting to see it. It became one of those movies that I always wanted to see but never got around to, so years passed, and finally in my early 30s I picked up the movie on DVD and gave it a watch and thought it was really cute. There have been rumors of a Hocus Pocus sequel for years now, but the rumors never came to fruition until finally this year, 29 years after the original movie first premiered, we got our Hocus Pocus 2. I watched it the night it premiered after seeing some less than stellar reviews on Facebook about the movie. I was a tad worried, but I was still hopeful going in that the movie would be a fun romp like the original. So how did it fare?

Set 29 years after the original, this movie follows three young women who accidentally revive the Sanderson Sisters, the three sister witches who wreaked so much havok in the original movie. Set loose in modern-day Salem Massechussettes, the three witches cause trouble once again, and they must be stopped. Hilarity ensues.

Or rather, hilarity TRIES to ensue. It tries very hard. Too hard, methinks. Let me start off by saying that I really really wanted to like this movie. I thought the original was adorable, and people have been making snitty comments about how people didn't really like the original movie, it's just the nostalgia of childhood that makes them THINK they liked it and the movie is actually horrible, but I was an adult when I saw the original Hocus Pocus and I definitely liked it, and I was as excited for the sequel as anyone else who has been waiting 29 years for this movie to materialize. It just didn't do it for me.

The movie starts off strong, with young actresses playing the three Sanderson sisters as tween girls who are fed up with the stuffy rules of ancient Salem. The three girls want to live life their own way, and it's hard not to root for them. When they venture into the woods and meet a witch and learn about their own witchy powers for the first time, I was on their side. It also helps that the three actresses were the best actors in the movie, which made me like them more. When the movie switches to present-day, I found it hard to connect with the three young girls who are supposed to be the main characters. Their acting just seemed really forced and off to me, and I wasn't a fan of their line delivery, or the fact that every plot twist was telegraphed way in advance so I spent the whole movie waiting for the story to catch up with the plot. I couldn't connect with any of the characters. Tony Hale tries his best as the mayor of Salem, and I wanted to like his character, but I just couldn't get there.

Bette Midler, Kathy Najimy, and Sarah Jessica Parker reprise their roles as Winifred, Mary, and Sarah Sanderson, respectively, and even their acting seemed really forced and try-hard to me. They just didn't shine in their roles like the three actresses who play the young Sanderson sisters, and I was disappointed. Sam Richardson is busy chewing up the scenery in every scene he's in, and the movie focuses on him way too much for my taste. I didn't care about his character, so I didn't want to see him hogging the spotlight the way he does throughout the whole movie. It just felt like a cheesy made-for-tv flick, which is what it was, but I expecte4d a lot more. They had 29 years to work on it and THIS is the best they could do? Poo. I have friends who really liked this sequel, and I'm glad they enjoyed it, but for my money it was a missed opportunity and a huge disappointment.