Month of Horror V: the Seed of dsheinem & noiseredux

[J T]

Dawn of the Dead is awesome. I love the basic premise that the undead just show up at the mall because they feel like they're supposed to be there. I wish they played around with the anti-consumerism themes a little bit more, but as long as there is a zombie stuck on an escalator from walking in the wrong direction, I'm happy.

I've been meaning to watch Company of Wolves and The Thing for as long as I can remember. I always loved the cover art of Company of Wolves that just shows the woman with the wolf mouth coming out of her mouth. I remember regularly looking at the VHS in a movie rental place decades ago. I don't know why I never got around to renting it.

[Michi]

The Unnamable



Along with Phantasm IV, my thrift shop also got in a lot of old horror VHS tapes that I’d never heard of before. Since it had Lovecraft on the cover, I figured I’d give it a go.

The Unnamable is the story of a group of college students. When Carter tells two of his friends about an very old town legend of some ‘unnamable’ creature lurking in a nearby home, his friend Joel doesn’t believe him.



To prove his friends’ superstitious beliefs wrong, Joel decides to spend a night in the old mansion, despite the protests of his friends. When he doesn’t return to school the next day, his friends eventually realize that something has gone wrong and go looking for him. Meanwhile, two jocks have already convinced two female freshmen to ‘explore’ the haunted house with them, a decision they all quickly come to regret in short order.


Oops.

The movie is very slow to get started. Most of the first third of the film focuses on the buildup of the plot and introduction to the characters, which wouldn’t be too bad if the characters themselves were all that gripping. Everyone is pretty much just a clichéd caricature that’s been seen before: jock, slut, another jock, good girl, dork and strict science guy. It says a lot about your movie when the most endearing character is the clinically disinterested storyteller who only shows any real interest in what’s going on when history is mentioned. He’s certainly more interesting than the puppy-eyed hero, the thick skulled jocks who’s bright idea it is to break and enter, and the dopey girls who blindly follow them. Couple that with a lot of wooden acting and you’re basically praying for most of the cast to get eaten.

What the movie does get right is the effects and the atmosphere. It may be low budget, but the money they saved by hiring actors out of the local Denny’s, they put to good use with the gore and atmosphere. There’s a surprising amount of blood when people die and, for the most part, an obvious effort put into the gore effects. Add that to the combination of deep shadows and saturated browns and blues in a distinct gothic setting and at the very least you have a lot of visually impressive elements for something so low cost.



The Unnamable also uses the tried and true method of not showing the creature until the end, only giving the audience short glimpses while it stalks the students through darkened corridors. It’s just a giant tease to keep you watching until the creatures’ revelation at the end. Luckily it’s an interesting design. The creators clearly weren’t going to be able to pull off the original story’s extra-dimensional…whatever it was, and instead crafted a pale, hoofed, she-demon who, despite creepily stomping around and scaring everyone, manages to stalk her prey with surprising grace. This is clearly where most of the films money went to, and if they were trying to impress, well then good job fellas, I’m kinda impressed.



Really, there isn’t anything here that you haven’t seen before. The characters are stereotypical, the acting is wooden, the story had been done before and the ending is a bit of a leap of faith. Despite that though, the atmosphere, tension and monster design are actually pretty good, making it feel less like a cheap cash in of a Lovecraft based story (though they changed a boatload of things) and more like something they were actually trying to make good in spite of their financial limitations. Regardless of its drawbacks, it still manages to be a fun little haunted house/monster movie. Though you’ll probably spend a lot of time wondering why, in their effort to escape, the characters choose to spend their time running through narrow hallways when there are a seeming abundance of windows in every room. They clearly need to take a page from the girl in The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and get over their phobia of glass.

As a side note, in my search for pictures (of which there were very few) I have found out that The Unnamable has yet to have a DVD release (probably explains the lack of pictures), though surprisingly its sequel, The Unnamable II: The Statement of Randolph Carter, did. Strange that.

[Nemoide]

The only real Halloweeny thing I've watched recently was a laserdisc compilation of old spooky-themed Disney cartoons ("Donald's Scary Tales & Halloween Haunts"). I'm a huge fan of old cartoons and while Disney isn't my favorite, it makes for some fun October viewing.

Game-wise, my primary Halloweeny title has been Castlevania: Curse of Darkness. Like Castlevania: Lament of Innocence, I think this captures the Castlevania aesthetic a lot better than Lords of Shadow: IMO both games deserve more respect than they got (from my experience most people brush off all 3D Castlevanias as being totally unplayable garbage not worth even looking at). Unfortunately the game is plagued by poor design choices, the worst of which is that it's WAY TOO EASY. The game is kind of BORING because the monsters don't pose any serious challenge and much of the game feels like it just requires you to walk through rooms that are much larger than they need to be.
I know there's a higher difficulty setting, but you need to beat the game to access it! WHAT WHERE THEY THINKING WHEN THEY DECIDED THAT??
At least the music is great and the monsters/locations look like they belong in the series.

[Forlorn Drifter]

I watched the 2003 Texas Chainsaw Massacre tonight, along with the new Walking Dead episode.

The Chainsaw remake isn't that great of a TCM movie, but good enough for my tastes overall. Gore, cussing, rednecks, hot girls in tight, wet tanktops with no bras on...

Jessica Biel though.

[dsheinem]

Watched



for the first time tonight. Fun film, and I enjoyed each of the stories a good deal. I liked the one with the professors, of course, but Leslie Neilsen probably stole the show.

I suppose I can start keeping a tally:

Films
1. White Zombie (1932)
2. The Killer Shrews (1959)
3. The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2 (1986)
4. I Eat Your Skin (1964)
5. I Drink Your Blood (1970)
6. Creepshow (1982)

Games
1. House of the Dead Overkill (in progress)
2. Alien: Isolation (in progress)
3. I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream (in progress)

[TSTR]

Yay Creepshow! And yes, the Leslie Nielsen story is great. But you gotta love "The Crate," right?

[J T]

Leslie Nielson definitely steals the (creep) show, but all of the cockroaches in the final story are overwhelmingly heebie-jeebies inducing.

Creepshow 2 has a fantastic story about a green bog in a lake.

[dsheinem]

But you gotta love "The Crate," right?

I liked the one with the professors, of course

[Ack]

But did you enjoy Stephen King as a moldy hillbilly with a mental deficiency?

[dsheinem]

But did you enjoy Stephen King as a moldy hillbilly with a mental deficiency?

Yup, all of the stories were good.