Racketboy Month of Horror 15: Whelp, That Happened

[Note]

Just played Parasite Eve for about four hours straight tonight! I'm really enjoying this game. The battle system is a lot of fun, but I'm still figuring out the upgrade system for weapons and armor. I'm hesitant to upgrade stuff so far. The item management is a bit of a pain too, but I'm dealing.

[Ziggy]

Star Trek (The Original Series), Season 2, Episode 7, Catspaw

Part of the charm to me for Star Trek TOS is how cheesy and campy it can be. And Catspaw is one of the best examples. A few years back, I had a friend that was watching through TOS for the first time. When he told me about Catspaw, he put it perfectly. "They made a Halloween episode!" And that's exactly what it is. Not only is it so cheesy in the good kind of way, but it just reminds me so much of that old, innocent Halloween fun. Like when things were spooky and people bobbed for apples, when Halloween is just good, clean fun.

Here's some actual still shots from the episode...

[Michi]

Okay, October is now in full swing! So here we go...

Night Watch <---Helpful link to full thoughts



A woman sees a gruesome scene in the house next door. But no one seem to be willing to believe her. Not the cops, not her husband, and not even her best friend. Instead, they believe that she's having a nervous breakdown and think she needs to go away to "recuperate" for a while, despite her vocal protests.

I kinda liked this one. It's sort of a combination between Gaslight and Rear Window, but with a twist. And it stars Elisabeth Taylor, which I wasn't at all expecting. I thought it might end up being a little too melodramatic, what with the "mental breakdown" plot and all, but they held it together and kept it from being too campy. Maybe not the best horror/thriller, but a decent one and an easy watch.



Vampires: Los Muertos <---Helpful link to full thoughts



A vampire hunter is tasked with a special mission, which partly includes forming a decent party of skilled bounty hunters to help him. Except all the people he goes looking for have already inexplicably been found dead. So he's forced to pull together a rag-tag team of questionable individuals to help him stop a group of vampires from performing a ritual that will let them walk in sunlight. Understandably, things don't quite go as smoothly as they could have.

Oof. The first Vampires was okay. A decent horror/western. But I don't know what they were thinking with this one. It feels like a very cheap and poorly thought out cash grab. The plot is basically a complete rehash of the first film, yet somehow manages to be lifeless and utterly --nay -- painfully dull. The characters are boring and lifeless, if not outright stupid. And even the vampire killing feels lackluster. Just no bueno, all around.



Killer Book Club



A female member of the local university book club is sexually harassed by one of her professors. Not taking kindly to this, the other members of the club decide they're going to put the fear of god into this douche, and scare some common decency into him so he never acts that way again. But things go awry and the professor accidentally ends up dead. The members of the club feel kinda bad, but they also don't want to go to jail, so they vow to take their secret to the grave. But one of them must have had their fingers crossed, because someone is sending them ominous messages hinting about what they've done and killing the members off one by one. So now the survivors must figure out who their murderous stalker is before they finish them all off.

Eh. This one was okay. It's like a combination of Scream and I Know What You Did Last Summer. It has some nice imagery and a couple of gruesome kills (minus a couple questionable instances of CGI), but beyond that I wasn't that impressed. I kinda figured out who the killer was early on, and some of the actions of the characters and the ending really annoyed me. Like, why are none of you screaming while you're being chased when you know there are other people around who could potentially come to your aid? This ain't a game of hide and go seek. YELL, DAMN IT! Or why are you running away to secluded areas instead of towards people? Do you guys just share the same group of deformed brain cells or what? Good gravy does shit like that irritate me. And I'm really getting tired of the "It's over.... Or is it!? *dun dun dun*" endings in every other horror movie. You guys know you can just END the movie, right? Not everything needs to be set up for a potential sequel that may or may not ever arise. Please just cross you fingers and let your audience live with conclusions. We won't be mad if you do, I promise.

[prfsnl_gmr]

Last night, we watched Cottage Country (2013) on Prime Video. It’s a horror comedy about a man who murders his brother while visiting his family’s lake cottage. His fiancé refuses to let that, or anything else, get in the way of a perfect marriage proposal, and she goes to great lengths to make sure the weekend stays (mostly) perfect. It escalates pretty rapidly from there. The film has an OK premise, and we were hoping for something like the horror film version of a Hallmark movie, but Cottage Country isn’t that. It also is not particularly funny, scary, witty, or engaging, and I really can’t recommend it.

[marurun]

Last night, we watched Cottage Country (2013) on Prime Video. It’s a horror comedy about a man who murders his brother while visiting his family’s lake cottage. His fiancé refuses to let that, or anything else, get in the way of a perfect marriage proposal, and she goes to great lengths to make sure the weekend stays (mostly) perfect. It escalates pretty rapidly from there. The film has an OK premise, and we were hoping for something like the horror film version of a Hallmark movie, but Cottage Country isn’t that. It also is not particularly funny, scary, witty, or engaging, and I really can’t recommend it.

That's too bad. The premise actually sounds like it could have made for a humorous and cringe-worthy (in a good way) film.

[Golgo 14]

Has "Late Night with the Devil" been discussed here beyond the reference to it in Michi's banner? I saw it when it came out in spring and liked it a lot. I don't think it sticks the landing, but I love the concept, and its depiction of a late 70s talk show is dead-on. I would absolutely watch reruns of that show, even without all the death and demon possession.

[marurun]

That Killer Book Club movie sounds like they really didn't lean into the books aspect of it. Why have a book club as the center of the movie if you aren't gonna book it up?

[PretentiousHipster]

1313: Haunted Frat - The infamous director David DeCoteau doing another 1313 entry (it was titled that way because streaming services could be alphabetical back when these films came out), and this broke me. I'll summarize it with one scene: There's a guy hosing himself down, and for 7 minutes it goes back between one shot with some ghost hovering her hand over him, or THE SAME 2 SHOTS REPEATING

Event Horizon - Didn't expect this to be so silly. I need to process if that's a good or bad thing. Might have more notes later.

Hisss - An Indian film made by David Lynch's daughter. I couldn't tell what was legit good, and so bad it's good (the sexy ass shot of the snake/woman hybrid might fall under the latter), but either way this was incredibly entertaining, and I'm shocked that its imdb rating is in the 2s.

Frankenhooker - Some moments are awful, interspersed with moments of brilliance. Still, it's always impressive to find great performances in a horror film. I loved the monologues from James Lorinz, and Joanne Ritchie is a wonderful physical actress.

Nosferatu the Vampyre - What a great thing to rewatch. Drenched in atmosphere.

[Michi]

I've been busy...



Deadly Blessings <---Helpful link to full thoughts



After her husband's untimely and mysterious death, a woman and her friends encounter a lot of strange incidences that may or may not be involved with the creepy religious sect down the street.

This is one of Wes Craven's earlier directorial works, and also stars Ernest Borgnine and Sharon Stone, in her first major film appearance. It's...alright. The acting is fine, the movie looks good, and you can tell that Wes got a couple of good ideas that he repurposed for later projects. It's a bit of a slow-burn, with a lot of time spent watching the ladies sitting around fretting, but everything manages to come together at the end. Or at least it does until the last couple minutes when they add on that bonkers ending that almost sours the whole thing. Oh well. Still a decent watch.



Intruder <---Helpful link to full thoughts



The workers at a grocery store are going through the process of closing up and re-stocking for the night. But instead of quiet monotony, they slowly end up stalked and killed by a mysterious killer.

Okay, this one was much better. It's a pretty standard slasher, but it's well put together, with increasingly bloody kills, and a nice sense of style that includes some very creative camera angles. The only downside is that it's not very mysterious and most of the male characters have interchangeable personalities and are all wearing flannel shirts, so good luck telling them apart from one another. But it's still plenty fun and a little silly in places. So if you like slashers *thumbs up*



Spiral: From the Book of Saw



Gruesome deaths are occurring around the city and it's up to one detective to figure out the motive for the killings.....which he soon comes to realize may or may not be connected to him.

So last year I watched all of the Saw movies, so I figured I may as well continue with the rest of them. This one is technically a stand-alone, but it still follows the same general pattern as the others, just from more of a police investigative angle. Gory deaths, investigation, more gory deaths, "twist" ending, and then it sort of ends on a cliffhanger. Tomato, tomatoe. The only real difference is there is no Jigsaw here, it stars Chris Rock and Samuel L. Jackson, and it's really easy to guess the "twist". It's well done and all, but it's really just more of the same.



It's Alive



A man takes his wife to the hospital to deliver their baby, but what comes out of her ends up being a monster that kills most of the delivery staff before running (crawling?) off. The man then makes it his job to track down his offspring and destroy it.

An old classic that I hadn't seen yet. It has a lot of good, creepy moments, but I was a little surprised how cheesy much of it was, and I'm not just talking about the creepy, mutated baby. That was surprisingly handled very carefully. But a lot of the dialogue was cringey as hell, and I was surprised how quickly everyone not only jumped on the "well, I guess we have to kill it" bandwagon, but just how blasé everyone was about it. I mean, I get that there was a reason for that, but the fact that they never even offered another option just made their point feel a little forced. Fun movie though, just...odder than I expected.



Disappear Completely



A sleazy tabloid photographer who specializes in taking photos of victims death scenes, stumbles upon much more than he bargained for when he sneaks into the home of a dying senator and unknowingly takes a photo of something he wasn't meant to see. As he slowly starts loosing each of his five senses, he begrudgingly realizes that he's been cursed, but no matter how hard he tries, all of his efforts to combat it may be in vain.

This one was surprisingly good. It's a Spanish horror/thriller from 2022 that I had never heard about. It's a bit of a slow-burn that slowly builds and builds until the end, when the main character has to make a very important decision. Looks good, sounds good, nice atmosphere, very well acted....just all around very well done. Definitely recommended, unless you're looking for a lot more action in your move.

Streaming on Netflix



The Open House



After a family tragedy, a boy and his mother move to the remote lake house that their aunt is trying to sell, in order to get away for a bit. But as strange things start happening around the house, it becomes more and more evident that someone may have snuck past the realtors and is now hiding out in the house, slowly tormenting the two of them.

Aaaaaaand we go from a good Netflix movie to a bad Netflix movie. This is the type of movie that you finish watching and immediately wish you could get the last 90 minutes of your life back. To be fair though, it has a good concept, looks good, and has some fairly good acting. But they completely bork all their goodwill in the last 20-25 minutes with a crap-tastic ending. Which is a bummer, because it does start off very good by building up the tension and stringing along some interesting plot threads. But then it's like they either had NO idea how to connect those threads, or they suddenly ran out of money and were forced to end production, because NONE of those thread pay off. At all. I mean, they go NOWHERE. And it's not even like it was one big thing they forgot about. No. It was a bunch of stupid little things that they imply will somehow be important, and then just drop without ever addressing. It's honestly infuriating. For example, they make a big deal about this broken step in the basement. You see the kid break it, you see the camera linger on it's pointy-ness several times during the movie, and so you totally expect someone is going to trip or fall through that thing eventually but...Nope. Nadda. Nothing. They literally spent several minutes worth of screentime focusing on it, only for it to be absolutely meaningless. And that, dear friends, is basically the whole movie in a nutshell. Lots of focus on things that you think are going to be relevant, only for the movie to forget about them. And of course it doesn't help that climax itself sucks, with several points of it making absolutely no sense. So the story bites, and you should just save yourself the time and skip this one.

Streaming on Netflix...you've been warned.

[Michi]

Has "Late Night with the Devil" been discussed here beyond the reference to it in Michi's banner? I saw it when it came out in spring and liked it a lot. I don't think it sticks the landing, but I love the concept, and its depiction of a late 70s talk show is dead-on. I would absolutely watch reruns of that show, even without all the death and demon possession.

We have not, but I really liked it!

I do agree with you though, that the build-up ended up being much better than the payoff. But overall, I thought it was good, and I really loved their commitment to their aesthetic.

That Killer Book Club movie sounds like they really didn't lean into the books aspect of it. Why have a book club as the center of the movie if you aren't gonna book it up?

Right? I thought for sure it was going to be more about a group of obsessive book nerds who killed people, or that it would at least be filled with a lot more literary references. But no, I was disappointed on both fronts.