The Month of Horror PART IV: dsheinem vs. noiseredux

[Ack]

I watched this based on your review. Thanks for the heads up! The wife and I both enjoyed this and it's the perfect Halloween movie (sorry, noise, she didn't like American Mary, just me).

I'm glad you liked it! I've begun recommending Trick 'r Treat to folks I know. It's such a wonderful movie.

Watched Lords of Salem last night. I liked it, but didn't love it and was a bit let down to be honest. The imagery was damn cool, but the plot was fairly poor in the second half and the ending left me wanting a lot more resolution - it seems that things stop just as they ramp up. In any case, I am curious how different Zombie's own novel (based on a very different original script) compared to the film.

Sorry you didn't care for it, Ds, but I am glad we agreed on the imagery. I think the sudden let down at the end is perfect though. We know what happened, and we know what will be coming, but we don't know when or how. I got the same from Rosemary's Baby, what with the anti-christ being born, but how will things continue? What will come to pass as a result? We shall(hopefully) never know. But Zombie managed to include far more nightmarish perversity in his cinematography, which is why I like his film more.

Anyway, I watched more...



Viy is a film that I've been looking forward to all month, because it holds an important historical distinction: it was the first horror film ever produced in the Soviet Union. Released in 1968, this film only saw the light of day because the director was able to argue it was a piece of cultural history, since it is based on the story by Nikolai Gogol, which is in turn supposedly based on folklore.

Viy is a very strange movie. Khoma, a seminary student in the Russian Orthodox Church, leaves with friends for a holiday but angers a witch with his rude behavior. She rides him around the countryside, but as soon as he gets the chance, he beats her almost to death. She suddenly turns into a beautiful young woman, and Khoma flees. A few days later, Khoma is asked to perform a cleansing ritual for a lady's soul and arrives in time to learn the lady is the witch he beat, she has died, and he has to perform a ritual for three nights to save her soul. Over the course of those three nights, she haunts him with her powers and calls forth the various lost souls and demons of Hell to harass him, as he cowers in a protected chalk circle. Eventually, she calls forth the demon Viy.

There's a lot of disparity between our Western beliefs of priests and peasantry versus those presented here, so the film becomes an experience in cultural differences, and it's fascinating as a result. It's not very scary, and some of the effects are laughable when compared to the horror films coming out at the time in the rest of the world(Brazil's first horror film came out nearly a decade before this and is much gorier and frightening), but I can't help but enjoy this bizarre piece of cinematic history.



I know, C.H.U.D. is an alternate, but I'm getting to the point where I'm having to watch alternates to fill out the rest of the month. C.H.U.D. is a classic in some ways, as it exudes the aura low-budget monster flicks of the 1980s while also keeping an anti-authority and somewhat pro-environmentalist message about the dangers of dumping toxic waste, the evils of government, and the qualities of the homeless. It's also a fun movie that I really enjoyed. Say what you want, this is a great piece of 1980s cheese that deserves to be watched by anyone who enjoys a good monster(and they are some awesome looking monsters) flick or wants to see the filthy side of New York City. Also, John Goodman has a bit part!


Total: 20

Anguish
Demons
Creepshow
The Beyond
Zombi 2
From Beyond
The Beast with Five Fingers
The Screaming Skull
The Killer Shrews
The Tingler
Viy
At Midnight I'll Take Your Soul
Black Sunday
Children of the Corn
The Burning
The Descent
Trick 'r Treat
The Innkeepers
Stake Land
The Evil Dead (remake)
The Lords of Salem
The Gate
Kuroneko

Alternates:

Halloween H20
Fright Night
C.H.U.D.

[Stark]

The scariest part about Viy is that guy's haircut, isn't it? You can be honest with us.

[Ack]

The scariest part about Viy is that guy's haircut, isn't it? You can be honest with us.

Actually, his isn't as bad as one of the Cossack peasants. He also has one of the smallest mustaches.

And you do get to see the dead witch ride her coffin like a surfboard.

[dsheinem]

Blech. This one was pretty shit from start to finish. Not only was it largely incoherent, but the makeup/effects/etc. were painfully, distractingly bad to boot. I get that it was low budget, but that doesn't mean its production has to suck you out of the film. I much prefer the American version, which is itself not really that good.

Oct 2013 Films
The Reef (2010)
V/H/S (2012)
The Thing (2011)
The Island of Lost Souls (1932)
The Screaming Skull (1958)
Rubber (2010)
Trollhunter (2010)
Hush...Hush, Sweet Charlotte (1964)
Black Christmas (1974)
Videodrome (1983)
Killer Klowns from Outer Space (1988)
Pumpkinhead (1988)
Return of the Living Dead (1985)
Lords of Salem (2012)
Ju-On: the Grudge (2002)

Oct 2013 horror-related games
Tales From Space: Mutant Blobs Attack (done)
Little Inferno (done)
Darkstalkers Chronicle: The Chaos Tower (done)
Dead Space 3 (in progress)
Cry of Fear (in progress)

[Ack]

I also watched Ju-On after seeing the American remake, and I felt it suffered because the remake had used so much of the best of what Ju-On had to offer. Ju-On is a bit all over the place, but Sam Raimi managed to take the best parts of that film and basically construct a tale around them that lives up to those parts, in some cases completely cutting other side stories while also enabling a Western interpretation that has the added affect of alienating the audience. What I mean is, this is a Japanese ghost story, but as Americans we have no cultural perspective for how to deal with this, which makes it all the more horrifying.

Though I'd argue the empty shots at the end of Ju-On lead to a more disturbing conclusion than The Grudge, that the ghost will inevitably kill everyone and never stop.

[prfsnl_gmr]

Anyway, I watched more...

I find Soviet films fascinating. (They seem more "foreign" than movies from other parts of the world.) I may have to check out Viy at some point.

[noiseredux]

Started playing Aliens Vs. Predator which I got from GMG for $4.

...wow.

[Ack]

Started playing Aliens Vs. Predator which I got from GMG for $4.

...wow.

How would you compare it to Colonial Marines?



I liked Stake Land. It's a quiet film that captures the wasteland of rural America quite well while painting a mostly believable backdrop of vampirism, doomsday cults, supremacist movements, and survival. The vampires themselves make for excellent monsters, but the real danger (as always) is man. In this case, it's specifically the man who runs a white supremacist cult borne of a rural post-apocalyptic Christianity and fueled by violence, rape, biological warfare, and some strange relationship to vampirism. There are open questions about how the plague started, and they are never answered, but they never need to be. The theme of the movie is hope and survival, no matter the odds, as opposed to lofty questions of why this has come to pass.

The relationship between Christianity and the people is an interesting focal point, and there are multiple moments where the film might be considered to be loosely condemning certain religious and political views. Yet the film doesn't dwell on the existential points and societal criticism, instead each time swinging back to its central theme of survival. It's good, and for the most part, it's believable. The biggest strike against Stake Land would probably be the leader of the evil cult, who by the end of the film has turned cartoonishly evil.

Total: 21

Anguish
Demons
Creepshow
The Beyond
Zombi 2
The Beast with Five Fingers
The Screaming Skull
The Killer Shrews
The Tingler
Viy
At Midnight I'll Take Your Soul
Black Sunday
Children of the Corn
The Burning
The Descent
Trick 'r Treat
The Innkeepers
Stake Land
The Evil Dead (remake)
The Lords of Salem
The Gate
Kuroneko

Alternates:

Halloween H20
Fright Night (remake)
C.H.U.D.

I've removed From Beyond from my list, since I am unable to access it easily. I might watch something like Basket Case instead.

[noiseredux]

@Ack, you give a lot of credit to Sam Raimi for The Grudge? Do you know what specific input he had? Generally when I see "Produced by" in film credits I just read that as "Gave us money."

AVP vs CM... way too early to compare/contrast. But I'm enjoying it so far. Looks great, plays great. I think I thought this was an older game than it is. I figured it followed closer on the heels of the Jaguar game. So I was kind of shocked when it was actually really amazing visuals and had 360 controller support built in and all. I'm so early-in though, as it took me a while to d/l so I only played for like a half hour. I thought the part about the club was awesome with the loud dance music and all.

[Luke]

Which Aliens Vs. Predator are you playing?

I have AvP Gold edition, which came out in 1998 I think. Looks like a different game.