2020 October Horror Challenge #85: "Twins of Evil"

 

Every time I watch these movies set during the Salem witch trials, I always get sad. I know these movies are overdramatized, but many women and others were actually burned and tortured under suspicion of being witches. With all my quirky oddities, I know I'd be one of the first ones in line to be burned, and thinking about this cruel evil that was perpetrated on many innocent people is just depressing.

In this movie, identical twin sisters come to live with their uncle after the death of their parents. They live in the shadow of a brooding old castle that is said to be a home for vampires. One of the twins is innocent, but one falls under the spell of the evil Count who lives in the castle and becomes a vampire. Which girl is evil, though? It's pretty easy to guess, actually,  even if you don't see one of the movie posters that gives everything away.

Peter Cushing plays a devout witch hunter in this movie. He is the girls' uncle, and he is obsessed with ridding the land of evil (where "evil" is defined as anything he doesn't like or understand). In this movie he is contrasted with Count Karnstein, played by Damian Thomas, who is just as preachy and overbearing and smug, but he worships Satan instead of God. They're a couple of blowhards, and they both do a lot of evil and hurt a lot of people, all in the name of different gods. 

There's some cool effects in this movie. One character is bitten by a vampire, and we see their reflection in a mirror slowly disappear as they turn from human to vampire in front of our eyes. That's a great shot, proving you don't have to spend millions on cgi to make your effects special. There's also a scene where a cross burns into a vampire's hand that actually looks real enough to make me cringe.. There's some good shots of vampires attacking victims and drinking their blood, and a graphic stabbing death that happens near the beginning of the movie. Plus some poor girls get burned at the stake. Humans can be just as cruel as vampires, clearly. Makes you wonder who the real monsters are. 

Gustav makes my blood boil in this movie. I love Peter Cushing, but he does a great job playing a douchebag in this movie. What kind of unbelievable asshole would  bring a murder victim into a class full of teenagers just to taunt the teacher? "Hey, you don't believe in vampires? Well look at this mutilated victim!" That's just all kinds of fucked up. He gives this speech later on about how he's always tried to be a good man, but I don't feel any sympathy for him. You don't get to burn a bunch of people at the stake and then whine about how you're misunderstood.

The climax of this movie really pissed me off. It had me cussing at the screen. God save us from your followers who are so sure they're doing what is right even while they do unspeakably evil things in your name. The ending to the movie is really great though, and we finally get to see the whiniest character in the whole movie actually do something useful. There's some more cool death/transformation effects here too. Overall this movie is a lot better than I expected it to be, and I'm definitely glad I checked it out.

October Horror Challenge #84: "The Tomb of Ligea"

 

Aren't those movie posters cool? This  movie had so many great posters that I had a hard time narrowing it down to just three. This  is another Vincent Price horror movie. I just love him. He's always in these angsty Gothic productions, isn't he? Poor guy can't catch a break and always ends up getting the short end of the horror stick. In this movie, he loses his wife, but her spirit refuses to leave and let him get on with his life. Rude. I've never seen this movie, so I'm excited to check it out today.

So as I said, Vincent Price plays a grieving widower in this movie. His wife has died, and from the sound of it, she ran every aspect of his life, so he's lost without her. He keeps seeing visions of her in his dark, creepy castle, and a black cat shows up and follows him around, and he begins to think it's the spirit of his dead wife Ligea. As time passes, he meets another woman and they fall in love and get married (a bit too soon, methinks) but when his new wife moves into the castle, she can't sleep, because she's haunted by strange happenings. Her husband tries hypnosis to get her to calm down, but she is overtaken by the spirit of Ligea, who tells him she will always be his wife and will never leave him (dude, give it a rest, you're dead! Go away!) Can he find a way to get his dead wife to move on so he can live in peace? Probably not, given his track record in movies like this, but he can try.

The castle itself is dark and spooky and brooding. I'd almost be terrified just living in that place even if there were no evil spirit there. Sadness and death seems to lurk around every corner. And I feel for Vincent Price's character, under the control of his overbearing wife that he can't escape even from beyond the grave. We see him slowly turning more and more crazy as the movie goes on, and the ending, where it all comes together, is pretty epic. I won't give it away, but that's a spectacular sequence, and the final shot of the movie is mean-spirited but fitting, I guess. Ligea finally gets what she wants. Remind me to never get married.

2020 October Horror Challenge #83: "Fright Night (2011)"

 

The original "Fright Night" was one of my favorite horror movies when I was a kid. I wasn't allowed to watch it, but my brother and cousins and I would catch scenes from it every chance we got when the adults would watch it, or when it was on TV. "Fright Night" was one of the first horror movies my mom bought for my brother once she thought we were old enough to watch it, and we were ecstatic to finally get to see the whole thing. We wore  out that ratty VHS tape,  lemme tell you. I meant to watch the remake right after it came out, but I kept putting it off, and years went by, and now I'm way late to the party. I'm still excited to finally see this today. I hope it's as fun as it looks.

Anton Yelchin plays Charley, a high school senior, who's dating the hottest girl in school and suddenly finds himself part of the "in-crowd," leaving his old friends behind. Strange things start happening in his neighborhood, people start dying, and Charley concludes his new neighbor, Jerry, is a vampire. Of course nobody believes him, so he seeks advice from a "paranormal expert" named Peter Vincent (played by David Tennant!) Can they stop the creature of the undead before he chows down on the whole neighborhood?

The Charley in the original movie is less of a tool than this new version. I love Anton Yelchin, but his character in this movie is a douche. He totally tosses his old friends aside because he's part of the "cool crowd" now, and he goes off about how he doesn't need his former best friend, Eddie, because his life got better when they stopped hanging out. What an asshole. Yeah, Eddie is kinda being a pushy jerk, but I get why he's pissed that his best friend dumped him, and of course Eddie is the first one to suspect that Jerry is a vampire, and at first Charley blows him off, but then he learns that Eddie was right, and he can't get anyone to believe him, either. How's it feel, dickhead?

Colin Ferrell is AMAZING in this movie. I have to say that because I doubted him so much when I first heard about this remake. I grew up with Chris Sarandon being the quintessential evil vampire in the original "Fright Night," and I wasn't sure if Colin Ferrell could pull it off in this movie. He oozes this pure evil though, and his smug, chauvinistic sexiness really works for the role. Plus he's meaner than the original version, and his casual cruelty ramping up to full-blown psycho is actually kinda scary. He really did a great job (sorry Chris Sarandon,  I still love you! And I see you have a cameo in this movie; I love it too!)

This movie goes for more horror than humor, not nearly as fun and campy as I remember the original being. David Tennant's performance is good for some comic relief, though. He's actually hilarious in this movie. I love how he plays an occult/ vampire expert who is all image and no substance, until he's confronted with a real vampire and he has to figure out what to do. We find out the real reason why he started collecting vampire lore, and why he's a cynical drunk now who shuns human connection. Good character development here. Reminded me that David Tennant is a good actor.

There are some cute nods to the original movie too, like how Jerry is always eating apples (guess an apple a day keeps death at bay) like Chris Sarandon did in the original movie. Apples help keep your teeth clean, so they have that sexy evil gleam all vampires want. And there's a scene that happens at a dance, too, though not as cheestastic 80s awesome as in the original. I also like Amy in this version of the movie. She has more of a personality and some fight to her, which was fun to watch. Charley has more fight to him too, once he stops being such a twat. When he says "I don't want to live until tomorrow if you're the kind of man I'm gonna be," that kicked all kinds of ass. Overall, I really loved this movie, and I'm glad I finally watched it.

2020 October Horror Challenge #82: "The Dead Talk Back (MST3K)"

 

I don't know about you, but if I had the ability to build a machine that allows me to communicate with the dead, I wouldn't fucking do it. Dude, I've seen way too many horror movies, and this shit doesn't ever end well. Do you want zombies? Because this is how you get zombies (or ghosts, or pissed off dead people killing humans like in the movie "Pulse""). This movie is about a guy who invents a machine that allows people to communicate with the dead, and of course there's a twist.

This movie was made back in 1957, but was never shown anywhere theatrically, and it remained buried until it was unearthed and released on VHS in 1994. Of course, if a movie has been "earthed" in the first place, it's likely to be terrible most of the time, but I have seen a few good ones from time to time, so hope springs eternal, and the MST3K commentary will hopefully make this movie enjoyable,  even if it's terrible. As I said before, this movie is about a guy who inventd a machine that allows the living to communicate with the dead. He tries to use this machine in order to help him solve a murder. He lives in a boarding house because it's close to his lab, but a bunch of other weirdos live there in the other rooms, and when one is murdered, the police suspect that another resident might be involved. The scientist brings the victim back from the dead in order to point out the killer.

The thing is, and I find this a lot with tiny, microbudget movies, the plot is a good idea but the movie sucks. It makes me kinda sad, because you can tell the movie would have been good if it hat a budget to afford some halfway decent actors. As it stands, most of the action happens offscreen and the characters preach what it all means at us. I seriously had a hard time staying awake for this, even with the snarky commentary. The MST3K crew didn't really even have anything to work with. It's not their fault, the movie is just deathly boring, and there's not much to say. What a letdown.

2020 October Horror Challenge #81: "The Wrong Stepmother"

 

I love "crazy new spouse terrifies blended family" stories. The "Stepfather" movies ate some of my favorites (both the originals and even the remake) so I was excited to see this among Hulu's Halloween horror movie selections. "The Stepmother" instead of "The Stepfather." I know from experience how women can be crazy and even scarier than men, so I was ready to see a creepy killer woman lurking in the shadows of this movie.

This movie opens with a scene showing us just how creepy the scary stepmother is in this movie. Seeing her stand in the shadows in a dark hoodie sent a chill down my spine. We cut to a teenage girl and her little sister making breakfast for their dad. Turns out their mother died a few years ago, and the dad has started dating a new woman (uh-oh). His younger daughter likes  the new woman, but his teenage daughter thinks there's something strange about the new woman (there is! Run, dad, run!) As the movie goes on, the new girlfriend gets more and more scary. Can the teenage daughter stop the scary lady and save her family before it's too late?

Look, dating is hard enough on its own. You have to meet someone,  learn about them, be vulnerable and open without scaring them away with too much information, and of course you always have to worry about crazy psychos like the lady in this movie that make the idea of dating even more intimidating. I think I'll just stay at home with my cat. Not nearly as many killer cat movies, yo.

Here i am again, being freaked out by a Lifetime horror movie. This is more a psycjogical thriller than the openly horrific stuff luke "Devil's Diary," but it's still pretty creepy seeing the new stepmother, Maddie, insert herself into everyone's life, starting out a little overprotective, slowly becoming more and more unhinged. Cindy Busby plays Maddie, and she's got these big eyes that show a lot of emotion, so when she goes from "happy mommy" to "angry mommy" she really sells the anger and the danger people are in if they piss her off.

Since this is a Lifetime movie, there's no gore, and everything gets wrapped up a little too easily for me (and cheesily too) but there's still some creepy scenes and a fun cameo by Vivica Fox. I had fun with this one, even though it's not great or anything.

2020 October Horror Challenge #80: "Scream 4"

 

I saw this movie back when it first came out in theaters, and there was some problem with the movie, so it cut off 10 minutes before the end. I got to see the big reveal, but not how it ended, so I had my friend Ed tell me what happened. I haven't watched it since back then, so I'm excited both to check it out again and to finally get to see the last 10 minutes of the movie.

This movie takes place many years after Scream 3 and the final end of the Ghostface killer saga. To help her overcome the traumatic events, Sidney Prescott wrote a self-help book that has become a best seller. She returns to her hometown to reconnect with her family and friends and to promote her book. Unfortunately, someone wants to resurrect the Ghostface legacy, and teens start being horribly murdered after receiving phone calls reminiscent of the taunting Ghostface calls from the original movies. Can Sidney and her friends Gail and Dewey survive another round of Ghostface killings?

I'm glad to see the witty dialogue that exemplified the original movies is still in place here. I still crack up when the killer says:

"Do I *sound* like a Trevor to you?"

And when Sidney's teenage cousin tells her boyfriend she's staying in a house with Sidney, her boyfriend says:

"What are you doing in the house with Sidney Prescott? That's like being on Top Chef with Jeffrey Dahmer."

HAHAHAHAHAHAHA!

The killer is MEAN this time around. He taunts Sidney about making money off the murders while not caring about the town she left behind to rot. While the police (with Sheriff Dewey) are giving a press conference talking about how they are following several leads and they feel things are under control, he throws a dead victim off a roof and into the crowd. Jerk.

I love the contrast between the original survivors, who are all approaching middle-age now and the teens being targeted by the killer, who are all around the age they were when these murders started once upon a time. This exchange between Gail and Dewey captures that feeling perfectly:

"This party is all about the "Stab" movies! How meta can you get?"

"...how what-a can you get?"

"I don't know, I heard them say it!"

Like it or not, these movies are a part of my life history. The original movie was one of the first horror movies I watched with my mom back when it came out (on VHS!) And the sequels were awesome fun when I watched them back in college. They reminded me why I love slashers so much. I've watched the original three movies many times over the years, and they're always a ton of fun. I was excited to see a sequel come out when I heard about part 4, and I was just hoping they didn't shit all over one of my favorite series, and I don't think they did. In fact I think they nailed it.

2020 October Horror Challenge #79: "Contamination (Rifftrax)"

 

It's been a rough day, so im in the mood for something funny, so Rifftrax to the rescue! This is their riff on a terrible alien invasion movie from 1980. The sad part is, all the movie posters look really cool, so I bet a lot of people were tricked into watching this movie in theaters back in the day and were PISSED. The movie is about a spacecraft that returns from Mars with the whole crew dead and some weird looking green pod like things that are supposed to be eggs, and they ripen in the heat and then burst open and cause anyone who gets hit by the goo to melt and fall apart. Something about a coffee company smuggling the eggs in their coffee crates so the eggs can explode and infect people and take over the world. Yeag, u don't get it either. Maybe you have to smoke crack for the movie to make sense. There were some great lines in the Rifftrax commentary though. Some of my favorites:

"Movies are being contaminated by unreadable fonts!"

"Ooh, Italian *and* German! Maybe we're gonna watch a Leopold and Loeb co-production next!"

"I'm sure the dead soldiers will appreciate you bantering like Abbot and Costello."

"Can't we just push it over the river to New Jersey and let THEM deal with it?"

"Hey, please don't insult the pus filled eggs by comparing them to Coors light."

"Good idea, hide in the shower until the movie decides what it's about!"

"They all look like if Ant Man joined the KKK."

There's also this long, pointless sequence of a guy looking at a plane, slowly getting in, slowly taking flight...so on. One of the Rifftrax guys sang this song about looking at a plane, and it had me laughing so hard I was crying and couldn't breathe and my sides hurt. The commentary definitely made this movie worth checking out.