Some things you just can't avoid around Halloween and one of them is the never ending lists of top scary movies. There are tons of them and while there are some consistencies, their particular focus is usually pretty obvious. This particular list, for instance, has a heavy influence from the days of cheesy yore. While The Birds is pretty frightening (made so by Hitchcock's genius non-use of music so as not to cue a scene), it's coupled with more than its fare share of pre-World War II movies. I'm sure it was frightening in its day but really, how scary is Boris Karloff now?
What's scary changes over time and, in my humble opinion, anyway, the kind of scary that transcends time irrespective of its cheese factor is few and far between. The original Romero's Dawn of the Dead will carry on, not because it's a first of its kind or simply old, but because it's pretty horrifying. Just because something's old doesn't mean it's scary and if you have to keep referencing how horrifying it was for its time, it's probably lost it's touch. Love you, Bela Lugosi, you are a classic. But let's be honest: you don't pack the same punch you used to. 30 Days of Night? Maybe a little bit more so.
Sometimes it's not just ghosts and vampires that make one jump for Halloween. Sometimes there's little else more frightening than faerie tales. And I'm not talking about the Disney kind. Carlo Collodi's original PINOCCHIO talks about the wooden boy getting lynched and murdered for being a bad kid. The best quote from that linked article -
The moral of the [Disney] film is that if you are brave and truthful, and you listen to your conscience, you will find salvation. Collodi’s moral is that you if you behave badly and do not obey adults, you will be bound, tortured, and killed.
Yay for children's stories! And we can't forget Grimm's stories, where Cinderella's sisters chop off body parts to try and appease a prince, or Rumplestiltskin ripping himself in half. And a stepmother poisoning her daughter out of jealousy? Or a witch that lured children to her home with candy and then bakes and eats them? And these aren't out of Stephen King novels!
Those innocent faerie tales told to children while they're falling asleep are far more sinister than Disney gives them credit for. They were never meant to entertain children; they were meant to scare the everloving shit out of them to make them behave. And they say children's stories are too dark now. Perhaps we should reinstitute the old ways . . .
Another building for you, Gravesend Asylum (pronounced graves-end). Which apparently isn't in Gravesend, Brooklyn, nor is it even really called Gravesend. According to Opacity, it's a pseudonym. Not sure why. To protect the tumble down?
Still, it's effing creepy. Be sure to check out the gallery for Gravesend on the Opacity site. It'll be sure to give you nightmares!
(Both images appear to be from the Opacity gallery but were found on Google Images.)
The last couple of years, around Halloween, I've been making posts under the label of Fright Fest, highlighting awesome horror movies from over the years. Now I'm going to broaden the scope a bit and add in some extras; not just horror movies but spooky things. Creepy buildings that give good scary inspiration or some cemetery pictures that could get your spooky juices flowing. The title will now be Creep Factor in my Features index, slightly modified to fit the new format.
So for the first Creep Factor I'm going to give you a building. It's local for me, less than an hour away down by the shore in Connecticut. Ghost seekers galore would go here, trying to hunt out the rumors of hauntings. It is a sanatorium, after all. There's bound to be something left behind, lurking in the shadows. The Norwich State Hospital was, of course, a hospital for the mentally ill. They were all the rage, you know. Of course, due to budget concerns, the place closed and has been left to rot ever since. There's been some speculation as to what's going to be placed there, if anything. Some say an amusement park (for serious, people are demented), others say a mall. But nothing's happened yet.
Last year the people from the show Ghost Hunters were granted filming access to the hospital. That comes with some bragging rights because the state has never before allowed filming to go on in there, although many have asked. I don't know why they let them go now. Solider Boy had to do some urban warfare training there. At night. He said it freaked him the hell out. He'd come upon a room where a chair and random teddy bear were set up all creepy and he'd just stomp out. Water would be flowing through the pipes and it'd echo, making creepy sounds. Pretty horrifying.
You can find more pictures at the Opacity site linked above.
Another FEARnet find, Catacombs stars ShannynSossaman and Alecia "Pink" Moore. Set in Paris, a girl that's wound up rather tightly goes and visits her sister currently living in Paris who just wants to help her unwind a little. It's there the girl finds out about the catacombs under the city used to house millions of plague victims who just couldn't fit anywhere else. And what better way to use a mass grave than to have a rave? Of course!
While the lead-up is a little on the lame side, I really liked the premise and the overall execution of the plot. Very short on gore and heavy on dark corners and rustling shadows, Catacombs plays more to the psychology of horror, and what one person can do when pushed too far. Of course it's not the best horror movie in existence but the lack of gore certainly elevates it for me. It definitely tended to drag at parts while the girl was down in the tunnels, to the point of where it overplayed the tension and even counteracted it, but I still liked it far more than what I thought I would.
This is another one of my FEARnet finds and I thought it was pretty good. It's a combination of a zombie movie and a ghost story movie all rolled into one. It's not your standard zombie apocalypse type of movie and these are not your mindless, run-of-the-mill zombies. They're zombies with a vengeance.
Back in the day children were used in mines in this rural Pennsylvania town. As if that wasn't bad enough, the guy that owned the mines was a total douche and decided to blow the tunnels with the children still in them. Nice, huh? Yeah, well, the kids didn't think so either. Nearly a hundred years later stories haunt the local town about zombie children that come out at night to eat the flesh of the living. But they're more goal-oriented than that. They want revenge. They want the blood of the guy that buried them alive. And they just may get it in a relative down the channel.
Wicked Little Things has the ambiance of a ghostly movie and the relative grossness of a zombie movie. It's not over the top and it's more about mood and scares than the gore factor which is a giant plus in my book. For a different type of zombie movie, one that might actually scare you, Wicked Little Things might just be the one to do it.
Fright Fest is back! And thanks to all that is FEARnet On Demand, I've discovered a few movies I probably wouldn't have otherwise. First up is a vampire flick called Bled.
The greater premise is that an artist falls in with a tough, and rather undead, crowd. Her uber-hottie tempts her to try this hot, barely heard of drug from Eastern Europe that induces trips that would put acid to shame. Of course, our protag goes for it and trip she does. And it's so eerily real. In this nether realm she hooks up with a vampire lover who keeps tempting her back into her dream state for more. The thing is, she keeps bringing stuff back with her when she crashes.
While high on the Gouda factor, I couldn't help but love the vampire concept this movie doled out. Yeah sure, the plot was boring at times and man, was the acting bad. But the vampires? Awesome.
Now ladies, these aren't your cuddly type of vampires. Sure, they can cloak themselves to look all sexy but underneath, they're the things under your bed's worst nightmares. The master vampire lives in this dream realm and can only escape when he's able to fully suck in a victim into his realm. The lines between this dream world and reality really start to blur the more the protag gets sucked into the drug. Not only does she show signs of sleepless nights but the girl comes back from her dreams with bite marks and anemia. It's a hint of Freddy Kruger thrown in there.
And the thing is, the girl hits a point of no return. Eventually she doesn't need the drug to transcend and that's when the shit really hits the fan. So if you're looking for a vampire movie where you can fantasize about the undead dude, this ain't it. But if you're looking for a vampire movie with a nasty ass vampire with a really cool execution on the lore, this is your bag. For a 2009 movie, it's really different from everything that's being pumped out. A breath of bloody air, if you will.
The original, not any of the crap sequels or remakes. God, Hollywood unoriginality makes me die on the inside lately.
This has to be one of the most moralistic horror movies ever created. You have sex, you die. Awesome message. But outside of that, what really makes this movie scary is the creep Michael Meyers does. A lot of the time, especially in the grainy scenes of the pre-remastered version, all you see hovering in the background is that white face mask and you know something's coming but you can't help but jump when it does.
It's also such a dark movie. I'm talking about lighting. You can't see in the shadows any better than the characters in the movie can so you're just as surprised as they are when Mikey pops out. At least you're not getting a large knife in the eye.
Of course, you end up having organizations like NAMI that boycotts the showing of the movie every year because they don't like its depiction of the mentally ill. And for which I scoff because they really need to lighten the hell up. Political correctness is such a buzz kill. I'm not sure why they don't boycott every horror movie with a murderous villain because they're all some level of crazy but I guess because it's such a prominent part of Halloween that they just don't like it the most here. Oh well.
One of the best parts of this movie, though, is how slow Michael Meyers walks yet how capable he is of pwning all of his victims. No matter how fast you run, he'll always catch you. It's like a bad dream. Or maybe all that craziness of his gives him super powers. Maybe that's what NAMI doesn't like about it. They're giving away secrets!
That or the theme songs tweaks them out just as much as everyone else and they want to kill it.
Alfred Hitchcock was a genius, but you don't need me telling you that. You already knew, right?
The Birds is one of the most terrifying movies ever made if for only one thing - no music. What kind of suspense can you have when you can tell what's going to happen by the tempo of the music? Hitchcock felt the same way. So he took it out altogether. No creepy music leading up to spooky parts that you still jump at any way. Nothing. But. Silence. You don't know what's coming or when. You are just as scared at the people in the movie because those movie lives don't have a soundtrack either. They're hiding out but they can't tell what's going to happen by the sound of the music. Why should you?
Another insanely scary element of this movie - animals acting freaky. And not just, "hey, Fido's getting a little twitchy" but hordes of animals are staring at you and, quite probably, plotting your death. I mean, what would you do if you walked outside your door and blanketing your roof were hundreds of birds? On the power lines, birds. On the lawn, birds. On your car, birds. They're everywhere and you have no idea why and you have no idea what they're going to do.
Until they start attacking. Indiscriminately. And with animals, there isn't a motive, there are no specifics. There's just pure, unadulterated instinct and you're seriously FUBAR because there are way more of them than there are of you. And they peck. To death.
This movie will have you looking at birds in a whole different light. And, really, animals in general. Because who's to say something like that can't happen? Why not? Nature's already pissed at us for what we're doing to the planet. Like the animals won't turn on us next, huh? And what are you going to do? Go duck hunting? The, uh, pecking order (harhar) has violently changed and humans are no longer the top beasts in the food chain. Now we're the animals and what we originally knew as animals are the ones hunting us for sport.
If you don't find that extremely freaky, I don't know what'll scare you.
I couldn't find a short original trailer for the movie so this is a fan-made one. Pretty good, actually.
Nothing says "burn the Ouija board" like "Let Jesus fuck you."
I was maybe 6 or 7 when I first saw this one and, surprisingly, it didn't disturb me like Poltergeist did. Although I would never use a Ouija board by myself after that but that's besides the point. Doesn't negate the disturbing factor.
I mean, come on. An innocent girl likes having some fun with what everyone thinks is a toy and all of a sudden her bed turns into a vibrator without the coin slot, she cam mimic and owl and her mouth becomes a pea soup dispenser. Damn you, Milton Bradley!
But seriously, Hollywood better not fuck with this one. I understand they've sapped all of the original buckets and have nothing better to make than books into movie and remakes of classics and while they did re-release The Exorcist a few years ago with some bonus scenes, they left it alone. As it should be. No more touchy.
The original is the best. Even lacking all of the technological movie advances of today, the effects, and Linda Blair's acting, still make for some creeptastic scenes. Not only will make you look under the bed before you go to sleep, it'll disturb the hell out of you. Or into you, as it were. This was a movie of its time that was genuine horror. There wasn't any gore, no big boobied hoes screaming. Its purpose was to inflict genuine terror. Ask anyone who went to see the original release back in the 70s at the theater what their reaction was like. See if they were capable of sitting through the entire movie. Most weren't. Either they were afraid or so horribly disturbed that they couldn't keep watching.
What was more was that this was supposed to be based on a real case of exorcism. I think the boy was from Maryland. Obviously it was jazzed up for Hollywood. I'm not convinced that Linda's character (for the life of me I can't remember her name) would have survived after the exorcist twist (I mean, come on, that disconnected her brain stem from her spinal chord, she would have died when the thing left her) but the horror and the extent of the damage to the body was similar. While I'm disinclined to believe that people can actually be possessed, to think that someone went through something similar is enough to make my stomach churn.
If you're looking for a real bone-chilling fright, go with The Exorcist. Even I had a religious experience during this movie. And that's saying something.
There's nothing creepier than a child saying that line. Ok, maybe a My Buddy doll. But that's for another post.
Poltergeist was one of the first, if not the first, horror movies I ever saw. I was 4. And as the story goes, my dad let me watch it and my mom found me in my closet crying and saying over and over, "The skeletons are going to get me." I fail to remember that. My mom remembers clear as day. Apparently the skeletons freaked me out more than the fact that Carol Anne just sucked into a closet Hell that looked a lot like mine. Then again, I can't sleep with the closet door open to this day either so maybe it's a subconscious effect.
The movie was original for its time and twists the traditional haunted house cliche. This takes place in a Levittown type of neighborhood where all the houses are one design, there are 2.5 kids per family and everything's fine. It's not some creepy, run down old Victorian built on an old Indian burial ground. It's a pre-fab raised ranch built on an old indian burial ground.
The thing is, it's not just the EVP in the white noise of a TV and Kane that's creepy. What's creepy is that, for some demented reason, the production crew decided to use real human skeletons in the swimming pool scene. And the actors only found out years later. Then there's the Poltergeist curse since its cast members have a tendency of dying. Dominique Dunne, the eldest sister, was murdered by her crazy boyfriend not long after the movie released. Heather O'Rourke, who played the little Carol Anne, developed a disease that ultimately killed her in the middle of filming the third movie. They had to have a body double come in to finish out and had to cut and paste her voice all over the place.
This was the first movie that had me looking at the TV out of the corner of my eye. And to this day I refuse to listen to white noise. Nope. Leave it.
This is where it all started for mainstream vampire love, people. In the 19th century. This is the ultimate paranormal romance before there was even such a sub-genre. If little Miss Bella can slaughter her one true love at the end of the book, she wouldn't even be half of the woman Mina is. But again it would still benefit us because then Bella would impale herself on Edward's stake because she couldn't live without him. Slaughter away!
It's been a while since I've read the original and I'm reading the sequel now and, quite the contrary to the reviews I've been reading, I'm really liking it. It's kind of out there and, after a while you can tell where Stoker's writing stops and the recent authors' pick up (the book is an amalgam of Stoker's own writings that were cut from the original manuscript and add-ins from Dacre Stoker, his great-grand nephew and Ian Holt, a Dracula historian, if you will) but it's still launching me through all 400-something pages of the book.
Then there's the 1991 movie. Awesome. Aside from the fact that Keanu "Ted 'Theodore' Logan" Keeves was cast as Jonathan Harker (WTF was Coppola thinking there? was there no one better to play an English solicitor? really?), it really doesn't have any flaws. I mean, Gary Oldman . . . hello? Again, it's been a while since I've read the original so I can't compare the movie to the book but I can tell you they'll both boatloads of awesome.
We have genuine horror, the vampire in all its dastardly forms and ways, and we have the tortured love angle that does not end happily. It's terrifying and engrossing and painful all at the same time. If you haven't seen it, go rent it. Now. If you haven't read it, you're not a real vampire fan until you do. So go read it. Now.
I don't give books star ratings; I give them bite ratings. This is a bite. A book can get up to five of these evil-looking chompers, including half bites.
You can attribute your own wording to the ratings. Five's the best, three's decent, one and under isn't worth the gas to go to the library. I'll leave it to you to fill in the blanks.
