October Horror Movie Challenge- Day 29

Honeymoon (2014) follows young newlywed couple Bea and Paul who are honeymooning at Bea's family cabin deep in the Canadian wilderness. Things start out well, but after Bea is found wandering outside in the middle of the night, Paul begins to notice changes in his new wife. Honeymoon is a slow burn kind of movie without a huge payoff but it keeps you engaged and looks fantastic, especially for a first-time director. 8 out of 12 beers.

Hysterical Psycho (2009) is a mess. It's not funny. It's not scary. It's not even interesting. I actually fell asleep in the middle of the day for a few minutes during this one. It was the best part. Even a brief appearance by Gilbert Gottfried can't save this one. 1 out of 12 beers.

October Horror Movie Challenge- Day 28

On day twenty-eight I decided to see how many bigfoot movies I could get through. I started the day with the found-footage film Bigfoot: The Lost Coast Tapes (2012). An investigative journalist and his crew go to a cabin on California's "lost coast" to interview a man who claims to have recovered the body of a juvenile sasquatch in order to prove that it's a hoax. Once they get there, strange things begin happening in the woods around them. Without giving too much away, I will say that Lost Coast Tapes provides an interesting though somewhat muddled interpretation of the bigfoot legend. If it wasn't a found-footage film (Have I mentioned how sick of found-footage movies I'm getting?), I feel like I would have enjoyed it more. 7 out of 12 beers.

The second bigfoot movie of the day was The Capture Of Bigfoot (1979). The plot involves a local businessman who figures he can get rich by capturing a bigfoot. And that's pretty much it. He spends the whole movie trying to capture one, the sherriff spends the whole movie trying to figure out what's going on, and there's some stuff about "The Legendary Creature of the Native-American Arak tribe" thrown in. The movie's okay and features the legendary George "Buck" Flower, but most of it would be boring for anyone who's not into bigfoot. And probably anyone who is as well. Bad-ass VHS cover though. 5 1/2 out of 12 beers.

Three. Three was the number of bigfoot movies I could get through. To tell the truth, I kind of zoned out during this one. According to IMDB, Bigfoot Wars (2014) is a movie in which "A small town becomes the focal point of a brutal clash between man and a legendary beast". Yeah, sounds about right. That's the entire plot synopsis, by the way. Whoever wrote IMDB's plot synopsis probably zoned out a lot during this movie too, if they even watched it at all. I just watched this movie yesterday, but I really don't remember much about it other than it had Judd Nelson in it as a doctor and that the bigfoot (bigfeet? bigfoots?) kidnap young girls and rape them. Though as one of the girls puts it, "they weren't jerks about it or anything". I don't know if this premiered on Syfy Channel or not, but I kind of feel like even Syfy is better than this. 1 1/2 out of 12 beers.

555 (1988) is pretty standard slasher fare. Some inept cops and a reporter try to track down a serial killer dressed as a hippie that commits a rash of five murders during the fifth month in a different city every five years. The effects are actually quite good at times and whoever marketed the VHS obviously knew that and took full advantage of it. The rest of the movie is pretty low budget and sometimes too slowly paced, but was actually fairly enjoyable. 7 1/2 out of 12 beers.

I don't remember where I got a copy of And Here No Devil Can Hurt You (2011), but it's only a little over an hour long so I decided to check it out. It concerns a man and a woman who are having an affair and stuff happens. I'm not trying to be dismissive of the plot by saying that, that's pretty much the only way I can describe it without giving away the twist. I'm actually not even sure that I can call it a twist since I figured it out about 20 minutes in, and since nothing is ever explicitly explained I could be completely wrong about how I interpreted it. This is basic film school stuff. A lot of lingering shots, methodically plotted out scenes, and a pretentious atmosphere that all add up to very little. And Here No Devil Can Hurt You is not bad, but I can think of a lot of better ways to spend 67 minutes. 5 out of 12 beers.

The last movie of the night was Alice In Murderland (2010). In it, Alice is about to turn twenty-one, the same age her mother was when she was viciously murdered by a mysterious assailant. So to cheer her up, her sorority sisters decide to hold an Alice In Wonderland themed birthday party for her in the same building her mother was murdered in. Brilliant! As an added bonus the building is in a dangerous neighborhood, you have to walk through an abandoned junkyard to get to it, and the group has decided that no cell phones will be allowed at the party. And what a party it is! There's charades, and tea, and sleeping! But someone dressed as The Jabberwocky has crashed the party and is offing the girls one by one! Alice In Murderland actually has the basics for a fantastic slasher flick but unfortunately it doesn't follow through with any of it. The actors are okay and do a fine job of playing the parts they're given, but the movie seems so concerned with being clever or funny or quirky that it forgets that it's supposed to be a horror movie. I actually did kind of enjoy it, but it could have been so much better and I wish that it was. 5 1/2 out of 12 beers.

October Horror Movie Challenge- Day 27

It's been a long time since I've seen the first Dead Snow, but I remember really liking it. Although I'd have to re-watch the first film to be sure, I think I enjoyed Dead Snow: Red vs. Dead (2014) even more. Picking up from the exact moment that Dead Snow ended, Dead Snow 2 follows our main character Martin as he's fleeing Herzog, the Nazi Colonel. Taking Herzog's arm off in the escape, he succumbs to exhaustion and crashes his car into a snow bank. After waking up in a hospital, he discovers that not only is he being blamed for the death of his friends from the first film, but they have accidentally replaced his arm (which he previously cut off to avoid infection) with Colonel Herzog's arm that was still in the car. Because of the zombie arm, Martin now has increased strength and the ability to raise the dead. Enlisting the help of an American "zombie squad" and a WWII museum staffer, Martin sets out to raise a group of Russian soldiers to help take out Herzog's forces which are now intent on following through on their original orders from Hitler himself by destroying a nearby Norwegian town. Dead Snow 2 is a blast from start to finish and constantly surprises with new, inventive, and incredibly awesome kills. It's rare to find a horror/comedy that is a perfect blend of both. Dead Snow: Red vs. Dead fits nicely into that category. 11 out of 12 beers.

The Houses October Built (2014) is a found-footage style film that follows a group of friends on a road trip trying to find the most extreme haunted attractions. Scouring the most underground and backwoods of  attractions, they soon begin to realize that the attraction they're looking for has found them. The Houses October Built did a lot of things right and I have to give it credit for that. I really like the idea of a horror movie built around haunted attractions and there was a point somewhere around a third of the way through where I was fully invested and was excited that this film was also going to feel like a thrill-a-minute haunted attraction. Unfortunately, I never felt any actual connection to the characters and the movie quickly became a typical "Oh my god! What's happening? I'm so scared, guys!" found-footage film. Once it reaches this point, the film can only go one of two ways, neither of which are very appealing or interesting. I wanted to like The Houses October Built, but it just didn't do anything for me. I feel like I've had my fill of found-footage movies for the month, but unfortunately I know that this won't be the last one I see. 7 out of 12 beers.

October Horror Movie Challenge- Day 26

The lone viewing of day twenty-six was The Poughkeepsie Tapes (2007). I had been hearing about this movie for a while, but had been hesitant to check it out since I'm not particularly fond of found-footage films. The Poughkeepsie Tapes is what happens when someone does found-footage right. The footage of home movies taken by a sadistic serial killer is woven into a mockumentary that manages to actually throw you for a few loops. I don't want to give too much away, but The Poughkeepsie Tapes is the first horror movie I've watched this month that actually made me uncomfortable. The movie sets out to disturb you and make you squirm and it does a fantastic job of it. The sometimes chilling footage is cleverly worked into the film and edited in such a way that it feels like you're watching a real documentary. I don't know if I could watch this movie again, but it is the kind of film that stays with you long after the credits roll. 11 out of 12 beers.

October Horror Movie Challenge- Day 25

Due to my work schedule and a Friday night visit to a haunted attraction where I was berated by clowns and got to discuss King Diamond with a barbed-wire-bound Freddy Kruger, I wasn't able to get any movies in on day twenty-four. Day twenty-five however, began with Axe Giant- The Wrath Of Paul Bunyan (2013). A group of young adults go into the woods with a counselor and drill sergeant as part of a first-time offenders program to avoid jail time. When one of them steals the horn from a dead ox they incur the "wrath of Paul Bunyan", a giant with the mind of a child who lives in the woods. I won't tell you that Axe Giant is a good movie, but honestly it could have been a lot worse. The awful green screen effects make this movie look like one of those full-motion video PC games from the 90's and none of the people in the movie are likable (except maybe Joe Estevez, but when Joe Estevez is the highlight of your movie you've got a serious problem). However, Axe Giant managed to keep me entertained throughout and at the very least I didn't feel like it was a waste of my time. 4 1/2 out of 12 beers.

 

Bride Of Killer Nerd (1992) is a sequel to Killer Nerd which I watched last time I took the horror movie challenge and doesn't really bring much of anything new to the table. Taking place after the events of Killer Nerd, Harold Kunkle moves to a new town where he meets a high school girl that also has trouble fitting in. When she is humiliated by her classmates, she enlists Harold's help to exact her revenge. Bride Of Killer Nerd was probably the best movie I watched on day twenty-five, but it was only okay at best. 7 out of 12 beers.

Sharktopus Vs. Pteracuda (2014), aside from the hilarious but brief scene featuring Conan O'Brien, is just your average Syfy Channel creature feature. While it is definitely not the worst I've seen, it should be viewed cautiously with friends and lots of beer. Although I'm only giving Shartopus Vs. Pteracuda a generous 6 out of 12 beers, I am actually looking forward to the recently announced Sharktopus Vs. Mermantula. Also, look at that poster. That is a thing of beauty.

There are a whole series of Caesar & Otto movies and I can't for the life of me figure out why. Obviously someone must think these people are funny, but it was a chore for me to sit through Caesar & Otto's Summer Camp Massacre (2009). There were a few amusing jokes in this, the second movie of the day featuring Joe Estevez, but most of it just fell flat. Caesar & Otto are forced to flee the city when Caesar accosts the mentally-challenged nephew of... ah, fuck it. I don't even want to talk about this movie and any way I could describe it would end up making it sound better than it actually is. All you need to know is that it's a summer camp horror/comedy featuring Felissa Rose in a few Sleepaway Camp related gags. That's it. 3 out of 12 beers.

October Horror Movie Challenge- Day 23

On day twenty-three, I decided to tackle a Vincent Price boxset that I had lying around, and what better movie to start with than Scream And Scream Again (1970) which stars not only Price, but Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing as well. Scream And Scream again starts off rather disjointedly, altering between several different seemingly unrelated plot threads. The first being about a man who collapses while jogging and awakens in a hospital to find that his leg has been amputated, the second involving some sort of Eastern-European espionage, and third concerning a police manhunt for a killer that picks up young women at clubs and drains them of their blood. Eventually, all of these seemingly unrelated plots come together and the payoff is quite interesting. Although Christopher Lee is barely in the film and Peter Cushing is in it even less, Vincent Price gets a meaty role as a mad doctor. Scream And Scream Again builds slowly, but ultimately forms a memorable film that may be a bit closer to science-fiction than horror. 8 out of 12 beers.

Because it was lumped together on the same disc, I then watched a film that I had seen parts of before, but never actually saw the whole way through. The Abominable Dr. Phibes (1971) is a beautifully shot film in which Dr. Anton Phibes (played by Vincent Price) takes revenge on the doctors that he blames for his wife's death according to the ten plagues of Egypt. The setup for the kills are great and the film maintains a surreal, dreamy atmosphere throughout. If you've ever enjoyed Vincent Price in anything, this is a movie you absolutely have to check out. 10 out of 12 beers.

October Horror Movie Challenge- Day 22

Day twenty-two started with Silent But Deadly (2011), a horror-comedy starring Jason Mewes as a mute, goat-loving farmer's son who snaps and goes on a killing rampage. He finally ends up as an assistant on the set of a horror movie called Silent But Deadly while being tracked by the local sherriff. Silent But Deadly is okay and provides a few laughs, but not a lot of memorable kills. It could also have been due to the copy I watched, but the colors in the film all seemed ridiculously bright for a horror movie. Silent But Deadly is worth viewing as a curiosity, but I don't imagine it would hold up on multiple viewings. 6 out of 12 beers.

When the first Cabin Fever came out, I was living with some friends in a very small town near the waterfront. We were just hit by the tail end of a hurricane which flooded parts of the town and knocked out power everywhere. Having no power for over a week, we found that there was very little to keep us entertained once it got dark. On one of the first days the power was out, a friend and I decided to go to the movies in the nearby city that had power. Cabin Fever had just come out and I had heard a few rumblings about it through horror conventions, so we decided to check it out. We left the theater with that "What the hell did I just watch?" feeling and more questions than we had when we entered. What was with the pancakes kid? What was in "the kit"? There was so much about the movie that was either completely off the wall or inexplicable that we couldn't help but become entranced by it in the same way one would be by a David Lynch or Alejandro Jodorowsky film. Of course, we told everyone we knew about Cabin Fever and with so little else to do, this would often lead to us going with said person to see it again. This must have happened at least half a dozen times, and the movie just got better every time I watched it. With no power, board games became an easy distraction and we even went so far as to design our own Cabin Fever board game wherein the goal was to avoid becoming infected while not running out of beers. All this being said, it's obvious that Cabin Fever holds a special place in my memories and in my heart. That's why it saddens me to see a quirky movie that should never have had a sequel become a franchise that could never match the spirit that the original had.

 

While Cabin Fever: Patient Zero (2014) is certainly better than the first sequel (Cabin Fever 2: Spring Break, disowned by director Ti West), it still contains none of the fun or unexpected gross-out moments of the original. The plot involves a group of young people who set up camp on a deserted island to celebrate their friend's bachelor party. Little do they know that the island is not actually deserted, but is home to a secret research facility that has accidentally released a flesh-eating virus. Sean Astin plays the titular patient zero who is a carrier immune to the effects of the virus. His presence lends the movie a little credibility, but ultimately can't save it. While I didn't hate Cabin Fever: Patient Zero, I wasn't very interested in it and probably will forget about it soon. The team behind this sequel is also now working on a Cabin Fever remake/reboot. Ugh. 5 out of 12 beers.

October Horror Movie Challenge- Day 21

Day twenty-one was a big day and I had a lot of catching up to do, so I started with The Rage: Carrie 2 (1999). I had absolutely no hope for this one. How or why anyone would attempt to make a sequel (or for that matter, a remake) to Brian DePalma's masterpiece is beyond me. Maybe it's because I had such low expectations that I actually ended up genuinely enjoying it. Just for the record, there is no character named Carrie in this film. The plot follows a young outcast girl named Rachel, who lives with a foster family and whose schizophrenic mother is in an institution. When her best friend commits suicide, she begins to unravel and her long-repressed telekinetic powers begin to rise to the surface. Amy Irving, from the original Carrie, returns as guidance counselor Sue Snell who suspects that Rachel might have more in common with Carrie White than anyone else realizes. If you've seen Carrie you can pretty much guess how the story plays out, but thanks to some decent performances this modernized take on the tale actually works well. Also, although it came late in the era, the film is very much a product of the '90's. The '90's permeates every inch of this film in an undeniably charming (or depending on how you feel about the '90's, revolting) way. Unless you grew up in the '90's, I can only guess at how baffling the conversation about the band Garbage must be. The Rage comes nowhere close to the artfulness or tragedy of 1976's Carrie, but is a surprisingly decent follow-up. 7 1/2 out of 12 beers.

The Sacrament (2013) is another entry into the increasingly tiresome sub-genre of found-footage films. This one concerns a guerilla news crew that visits a religious commune at an undisclosed location in hopes of bringing back one of the crew member's sister. Slowly, they begin to discover that some of the members of the community are not as happy to be there as they let on. If you're at all familiar with Jim Jones and the Jonestown massacre, you'll be able to second-guess this pretty much all the way through. The Sacrament wasn't bad, but it also wasn't anything new or especially innovative. 6 out of 12 beers.

Next on the agenda was Insecticidal (2005).  When a group of insects that a student is experimenting on are sprayed  with ordinary insect killer by her annoyed roommate, they begin to grow to enormous proportions and kill off the housemates one by one. There's nothing special about Insecticidal. The effects are terrible, the acting is terrible, and the plot is not particularly interesting. 3 out of 12 beers.

The fourth and probably not the last Bigfoot movie of the month was up next. Bigfoot! (1970) features John Carradine as a local huckster who catches wind of an incident where a biker's girlfriend is kidnapped by a bigfoot. Hoping to make a fortune by caturing a real live bigfoot, he joins forces with the biker and his gang to rescue a harem of women from bigfoot. While Bigfoot! is no masterpiece, it is a lot of fun. Definitely the best bigfoot movie I've seen so far this month. 8 out of 12 beers.

After realizing that I hadn't seen a blaxploitation horror movie yet this month, I finished off the night with Blackenstein (1973) a.k.a. Black Frankenstein. An obvious attempt to cash in on Blacula, Blackenstein follows an amputee Vietnam veteran who agrees to be part of an experimental procedure to regrow his missing limbs. When his girlfriend who is helping with the experiment rejects the advances of another doctor involved, he sabotages the experiment which results in the patient reverting to a neanderthal state. Unbeknownst to the doctors involved in the experiment, the patient sneaks out at night to kill and consume victims as Blackenstein, the Black Frankenstein.  I had high hopes for Blackenstein, but unfortunately it just didn't deliver on the fun premise that was promised. The movie just sort of shambles along and ends on a rather un-spectacular note. 4 1/2 out of 12 beers.

October Horror Movie Challenge- Day 20

First up on day twenty was a movie I had been neglecting to watch for far too long, Mario Bava's Black Sabbath (1963). This classic anthology-style film provides quite a few moments of creepiness and reminds me of a grouping of old episodes of Night Gallery or Thriller. I watched the American version, which I understand is much different and not quite as good as the original Italian version, but I still enjoyed it. The first story, "The Drop Of Water" concerns a nurse who while preparing a dead woman for burial steals one of her rings. She is then assaulted by the apparition of the dead woman, who I might add is incredibly terrifying-looking. The second entry, "The Telephone" is about a woman being terrorized by threatening phone calls from her dead lover. This story is apparently the most different from the Italian version, as in the original the phone calls were from her dead pimp and the woman who comes over to console her was a fellow call girl. The final portion of Black Sabbath is the story of "The Wurdalak", a variation on the vampire wherein the titular undead being only feeds upon the blood of those it loves. As a whole, the movie works very well and is perfect for Halloween time viewing with a few pumpkin beers. 9 out of 12 beers.

If you've seen The ABCs Of Death, then you should already know what to expect from The ABCs Of Death 2 (2014). Twenty-six short films from twenty-six different directors, each corresponding with a different letter of the alphabet. The shorts are pretty much hit or miss, some are really good, but a lot of them are boring or just confusing. Overall, I feel like this sequel contains a lot more good ones than the original with my favorites being B, H, M, and W. 6 out of 12 beers.

Last up was Zombie Hunter (2013), a post-zombie-apocalypse romp involving a one-man zombie-killing machine known as The Hunter (Martin  Copping) that comes across a band of survivors led by Father Jesús (Danny Trejo). When a herd of zombies led by a giant computer-generated zombie attack their base, they are once again on the run unless The Zombie Hunter can take them all out. Zombie Hunter is a pretty typical zombie flick, but it can be a fun time. It has enough action to keep one interested all the way through even though Danny Trejo doesn't get nearly as much screen time as they would lead you to believe. 7 out of 12 beers.