October Horror Challenge 2017

Yep, I'd be crying the entire time. The girls would tell me to suck it up. This was my third or fourth time watching the movie, and I actually find myself a little sympathetic to Juno. She's the one who wants to go back for Sarah when they figure out how to escape. Of course that might have been guilt, I do get the sense that she cares for Sarah even despite sleeping with her husband. Juno is also the first one to stand up and fight the monsters instead of freaking out.

I have a habit of getting drunk and emotional while watching The Descent because it freaks me out so badly. So I live post what I'm feeling when I watch it.

I agree with you about Juno. I felt bad for for her right from the first time I saw it, even despite what she did. She's definitely the most badass of them. She shouldn't have left Beth to die alone, though. That sucked.

I wonder if it's really possible to die from fright, because I think I would if I were in that movie. It would have been when the tunnel collapsed. I would have never seen the monsters. *twitch*

i watched The Exorcist and Rosemary's baby.

Both excellent films, i really enjoyed the makeup work in the exorcist pretty good for the 70's!

Damn rosemary's baby had some great camera work, especially the shot where she


the film is not exactly that action packed but i found myself not bored at any stage of it

Also, i've seen Deathgasm previously. A pretty great film. New Zealand is doing very well lately, thumbs up to them.

Bone Tomahawk (2015)

How did this Kurt Russel Western wind up in the October Horror Challenge? I knew nothing about this movie, I saw the BD in Best Buy and the cover made it look like a typical western, which I'm not a big fan of. Friends kept suggesting I watch this during October and I thought they were crazy. The secret is that this is a gruesome, slow burn horror western about a group of cowboys who have to rescue some townsfolk from cannibal troglodytes(had to look up the spelling). If you can handle the slow pace, you'll be rewarded(punished?) with a horrifying final act as the heroes show these savages the meaning of Manifest Destiny.

This movie works because of the fully fleshed out and likable characters. Kurt Russel is good as usual, Richard Jenkins plays an aloof and hilarious deputy, Patrick Wilson is a poetry-lover who is determined to get his wife back from the savages, even with a broken leg. My favorite character was Brooder, the cocky, sharp-dressed, Indian-hating loner who insists that smart men don't get married. I didn't even realize until the end of the movie that he was played by pretty boy Matthew Fox. The performances are great, and there's a surprising amount of humor in the film, which really did a lot to help balance out the gory moments later in the movie. I did a lot of wincing and squirming throughout the movie, and now officially know the number 1 way I do not want to die.





Bram Stoker's Dracula (1992)

Francis Ford Coppola's visually stunning adaptation of the world's most famous blood-sucker is terrific as long as you can stomach some cringe-worthy accents by Keannu Reaves and Winona Ryder. Gary Oldman is fantastic as Count Dracula, and almost every shot of the movie is captivating. I love watching this movie just because of the old school special effects, cinematography and epic score. As a manly, straight dude, I never really notice or care about costumes, but even I find myself going 'ooh that's a neat dress' while watching this.

Gary Oldman steals the show, the American actors are a bit underwhelming, and Anthony Hopkins is crazy over-the-top as Van Helsing. Hopkins brings the films only humor, by being incredibly insensitive and matter-of-fact. The atmosphere is very dream-like, and the overall tone of the film is romantic. After watching Stranger Things, it was nice to remember how hot Winona Ryder was in her prime. She can read me to sleep with Arabian Nights anytime.

Bloody Birthday (1981)

Bloody Birthday, the film that makes you want to murder children. Ten years ago, three children are born during a solar eclipse. They grow up as inseparable friends, but something is off about them, and as their 10th birthday approaches, they get increasingly violent and downright murderous. I suppose its a testament to the director and actors, but the evil children in this movie really make my skin crawl and my blood boil. I'm all ready pretty uncomfortable with kids, so when movies revolve around evil children, it really gets to me. And in this movie, it's not just that the kids are killing innocent people, but they are also so damn smug about it. So the movie was effective, but I was feeling pretty conflicted about wanted to throttle some kids in a movie.

Perhaps it was a different time, but it's kind of funny how freely some of the kids are allowed to wander around, even waving a gun that the adults assume is just a toy. The kids rampage is pretty cruel, targeting nasty teachers, strict parents, and even some of their friends. The kids just love killing people, and I'm not sure why they decided to escalate things on their 10th birthday, but astrology plays a pretty big part in the movie. I loved the ending, and especially loved a scene featuring Julie Brown dancing naked in front of a mirror. I remember her with red hair on MTV, but she looks even better with natural, curly, 80s hair. Anyway, the most important thing I learned from Bloody Birthday is that if I decide to become a serial killer, don't keep a scrapbook of my victims.

Green Room (2015)

60 horror movies every October. Beheadings, disembowlements, scalpings, I even saw a guy get split in two, yet a movie starring Captain Jean-Luc Picard of the USS Enterprise is the one that had me covering my eyes. Green Room is about a punk band that accidentally witnesses a murder after performing at a club for nazis. The minimalist narrative is simply about them trying to get out alive as Stewart, the club owner, tries to keep the situation from escalating. This is one of the most suspenseful, tense films I've seen in recent memory.

Yelchin, Stewart, Poots, and Blair all give standout performances. What I like about Stewart's performance is that he isn't cartoonishly evil or menacing he's very matter-of-fact and has a business like precision as he tries to control the situation. Blair plays an oddly sympathetic nazi who doesn't seem prepared for the violence as things get out of control. The scene with the arm had me cringing and averting my eyes, I couldn't get it out of my head. The violence is realistic and brief, which somehow makes it more horrifying. One of the nazis looks like John Lithgow. Jeremy Saulnier is definitely a filmmaker to watch, his previous film, Blue Ruin, was equally suspenseful.





Extraterrestrial (2014)

This was apparently written by the guys who made Grave Encounters, which I thought was really enjoyable, so I had high hopes for this one, but it fell way, way short. A group of friends take a trip out to a remote cabin to take property photos and party it up when an alien space ship crashes and its pilot terrorizes them. There is so much wasted potential here. The characters are either bland or extremely unlikable. Gil Bellows and Michael Ironside are both wasted. I watched this with my buddy but we ended up laughing at it more than being frightened. The film attempts a few emotional moments but you're not really invested in the characters so they pretty much fall flat. There are also some annoying moments where the film dabbles with found footage elements as the obnoxious character films inappropriate moments with a very outdated camcorder.

The alien design is lazy, they are the classic, big-eyed aliens, just taller and lanky. The film attempts a bunch of jump scares, but none of them land. I really wanted to like this movie, but the execution just wasn't there. There are some classic dumb character moments, like when one of the friends decides to get out of the car as a spacecraft hovers overhead. The final act of the movie actually takes place inside an alien spaceship, and I kind of liked the way they shot these scenes, they made it seem very otherworldly. I wonder if the majority of the budget went to this part of the movie, as it was way more interesting than the cliche-ridden first two acts. The ending was pretty surprising and unpredictable, but it would have had more impact if you cared for the characters. I would skip this one unless you really love alien movies, but you'd be better off watching some episodes of the X-Files.





Death Ship (1980)

When a cruise ship crashes, the surviving passengers find safe haven in a creepy ghost ship. I'm not sure why, but I really liked this one. Maybe because I recently watched the terrible Bermuda Triangle (1978) and it set my bar low for lost at sea horror films. George Kennedy seems like he didn't want to be in this movie, and he literally sleeps through the first hour of it. Otherwise, the film has everything you could want from a ghost ship movie, even throwing in Nazis for good measure.

Something about abandoned ships scare me and being lost at sea would really freak me out. The exterior shots of the ship are pretty cool, and the shots of the inside of the ship are creepy. It's pretty slow moving, but for me I just enjoyed the setting. There's a spectacular scene involving a shower of blood, but the driving story of George Kennedy's possession is confusing and forced. Still, being aboard the Death Ship seems better than some of the recent Carnival Cruises.





Final Exam (1981)

Final Exam is an early 80s slasher about a maniac stalking a college campus during the last week of school.. as if exams weren't scary enough! Courtney is a good student with a lot of hair, I mean, it's distracting how big her hair is, and I've seen a lot of 80s slashers. I was cringing during one scene where a fraternity fakes a school shooting(!) to somehow help them pass a chemistry exam. Holy shit this scene would not fly today. One second, you're enjoying a harmless slasher, then suddenly guys jump out of a van with machine guns. It was really jarring.

If you're a fan of slashers, you know what to expect here. This was early in the slasher phase, so it's pretty slow paced, with most of the carnage happening in the final act. Still, there's just something about these films that I love, and I'm thrilled that there are still some slashers that I haven't seen yet. The characters are nothing special, but likable enough. I guess it wasn't until the Friday the 13th sequels that writers tried to outdo each other with obnoxious characters in slashers. This is an example of characters you actually root for and get bummed when they die. The killer is pretty bland, with almost no interesting characteristics, but if you like slashers, this is definitely worth checking out.

i want to contribute so i wanna share that i watched "the Nightcomers" episode of PD tonite and its still one of the best hours of television i've ever seen.



sorry i know no one cares but im in my feelings and i needed to tell someone haha

WolfCop (2014)

This is a fun movie that doesn't take itself too seriously, and clocks in under 90 minutes. Lou Garou(French for werewolf) is a deadbeat, alcoholic cop in a small Canadian town. When a mysterious cult kidnaps him, he finds that he has heightened senses, and when a local politician ends up torn apart by what looks like a wild animal, things get a little hairy. WolfCop has trouble hiding its super low budget, but in the right frame of mind can be really entertaining. I personally thought it was pretty funny. WolfCop partners up with a local conspiracy theorist who has the funniest lines in the movie, he really had me howling.

The transformation scenes are really gross and gooey, and the subplot revolving around the occult keeps things pretty interesting, although I felt like too many characters were in on the big twist, which made the world feel smaller. But I have to give it credit for including a werewolf sex scene that actually moved the story forward. Some of the werewolf scenes get pretty gory, but the film never feels mean-spirited, and I liked the tone enough to possibly check out the sequel one day.





The Hills Have Eyes (2006)

I've heard some genre fans claim that this is a rare example of a remake that's better than the original, but I thought it was a little underwhelming since it follows the original movie pretty much beat-by-beat. This is the story of an all-American family that gets stranded in the desert and hunted by deformed cannibals. The major difference in the remake is how the villains are hideously deformed mutants, due to radiation from nuclear testing. This actually made the movie less scary for me, because the villains felt a little cartoonish. In the original film the villains seemed like real people within the realm of possibility, but the mutants here, while visually appalling made the film feel too fantastical.

The film was effective at developing the family during the first act. The relationships felt genuine, and I think the acting was stronger in this version. Bobby's performance in the first film distracted me, but it's much better here, and of course Ted Levine is great as the patriarch. On the flipside, the villains are terribly undeveloped in this movie. The original movie felt like two families pitted against each other, whereas the cannibal family here are two dimensional monsters. Papa Jupiter doesn't even feel like a character, he just shows up at the end to scream and bite at the remaining family members. Ruby is also barely there and not as sympathetic as the character from the original The plot device of Bobby hiding the dog's death also felt forced here, as in 2006 it's not as common to protect women from bad news. There was a great monologue by a chair-ridden mutant known as Big Brain that feels like it could be symbolic of the decline of American culture, but I might have been reading too much into it because of the pumpkin ale. It's certainly not bad as far as remakes go, but I think I preferred the gritty original.