noiseredux Presents THE MONTH OF HORROR (2015) (remake)

[prfsnl_gmr]

Going forward, my posts in this thread will contain my film lists from previous years:

prfsnl_gmr's 2015 LIST OF TERROR!

1. Stephen King's Children of the Corn -
2. I Walked with a Zombie -
3. Village of the Damned -

prfsnl_gmr's 2014 LIST OF ABOMINATIONS!

1. House -
2. You're Next -
3. The Awakening -
4. Kuroneko -
5. Prom Night -
6. The Ghost Goes West -
7. The Prowler -
8. Silent House -
9. The Living Skeleton -
10. The Woman in Black -
11. Creepshow -
12. High Tension -
13. Cube -
14. The Whip and the Body -
15. The Banshee Chapter -
16. Trick 'r Treat -

prfsnl_gmr's 2013 LIST OF HORROR!

1. The Frighteners -
2. Kill, Baby...Kill! -
3. Salem's Lot -
4. Blood Thirst -
5. The Hunger -
6. Jigoku -
7. Full Circle (a/k/a The Haunting of Julia) -
8. Corridors of Blood -
9. The Craft -
10. The Bay -
11. V/H/S -
12. The Faculty -
13. The Devil's Carnival -
14. 28 Weeks Later -
15. The Host -
16. Dumplings -
17. Lisa and the Devil -
18. Jennifer's Body -

prfsnl_gmr's 2012 LIST OF DOOM!

1. The Last Exorcism -
2. The Innkeepers -
3. The Resurrected -
4. The Legend of Hell House -
5. Heavenly Creatures -
6. The Mummy -
7. The Abominable Dr. Phibes -
8. The Invisible Man -
9. The Corpse Vanishes (MST3K) -
10. The Wolf Man -
11. Don't Look Now -
12. Insidious -

I hope that these in-depth reviews will help some of you to pick some good movies!

[Ack]

Halloween 2

I decided to continue my horror marathon with the 1981 release Halloween II, since I had never seen it but enjoy the first one immensely. It's a direct continuation of the first film but saw release in a post-Friday the 13th world, leading to a few differences with the first. Most importantly it's generally gorier and more exploitative. There is some rough imagery here, and not all of it relates to Michael Myers killing people. The scene that made me shudder the most was of a kid with a razor blade stuck in his mouth. Nasty. Halloween II also featured a new director at the helm, Rick Rosenthal, though he had an active interest in matching the cinematic style of the original so the two could be paired together.

Frankly, I think Rosenthal did a pretty good job of trying to capture John Carpenter's work considering he was relatively new to the director's chair at the time. It's not perfect and occasionally gets more than a little weird, but the nighttime setting, the odd use of first person, the occasional appearance of Myers from the darkness, in general it works. Funny enough, it was Carpenter who actually added the blood, because he felt the movie wouldn't appeal to the slasher audience that was becoming so dominant in horror cinema at the time. The script also turned Myers from just an escaped mental patient into a Jason Vorhees-esque force of nature, slowly trudging onward but completely unstoppable in his desire to murder and maim. There is a scene late in the film where Myers sees Laurie Strode and walks through a glass door to go after her like it was nothing. Holy crap, that was awesome, intimidating, and disturbing. When Halloween II succeeds, it does an amazing job. But it also lulls and flounders a bit at times, particularly as the script tries to explain Myers by having some kind of connection with...druids. After this, the timeline splits between three films that go for the druid angle and two films much later that focus more on Myers and Laurie.

Is Halloween II as good as Halloween? No, I don't think so. But it is still an entertaining slasher and a solid return to the franchise. Overall I liked it. And it wraps up the story nicely; if you wanted to stop watching Halloween movies at any point, this would be a good note to end on. There is also an edited-for-TV version that cuts a lot of the nudity and gore but adds in a few extra scenes with additional exposition and explanations for what happened to certain characters.

My progress so far:

2/31

Zombi 3
Halloween II

[noiseredux]

you nailed it. Halloween II is definitely a lot gorier, and a lot nudity-er, and that's thanks to the rise of the slasher genre - really in a post-Halloween world. The original was like Alien in the sense of how tense and claustrophobic it can feel. The sequel is just way crazier, but it's awesome in a different way. If the original is a 10 (it is), then this is an 8 or 9.

For those interested in the sort of base cannon story, you can watch 1, 2, and then H20 since 3 has nothing to do with the series and then 4, 5, 6 go off into the other group of characters w/ Danielle Harris and all.

[Ack]

Hellbound: Hellraiser II

Wut?

I had seen pieces of this one over the years but never sat down and actually watched it being to end. I finally did that today. I would love to tell you what I think of it, but it leaves me more than a little confused. Still, I will try to sort through this, so please bear with me.

First, this is a movie in two parts. The first is actually pretty similar to the first Hellraiser: bloody person climbs out of something and kills folks for their skin with the help of another person, all while our hero, Kirsty Cotton, tries to deal with the crazy stuff going on around her. This time the action strikes me as a bit nastier than in the original, particularly having to watch a mentally ill patient take a straight razor to his skin in an attempt to get rid of the maggots he thinks are there. And then there are all of the bug-ridden corpses and way more erotic making out with skinless people.

But then halfway through, the movie goes to Hell. Literally, the second half of the movie takes place in Hell, and Hell is weird. Everybody gets their own private Hell, which makes sense, but some people get carnivals with clowns that juggle their eyeballs apparently. Or naked women writhing under sheets. Or the Cenobites' chain room. Or a hospital ward. It's grotesque at times but always bizarre. And above all of it, a giant spinning puzzle which shoots black light and is named Leviathan floats around all day and rules by...I don't know. Truth be told, I don't understand what I'm seeing a lot of the time, which negates a lot of the impact for me. And then the new big bad Cenobite is revealed, and he is the living embodiment of a sadomasochistic tentacle hentai. I think he looks silly. Gross and terrifying, sure, but also silly. My boy Chatterbox is way more interesting.

The end result is that, while Hellraiser was odd and creepy, Hellraiser II comes off as over the top and bizarre. Still twisted in many of the ways the original was, but to the extreme. It has some incredibly vivid images, but seriously, what the hell did I just watch? And should I ever consider tracking down more of these in the future?

My progress so far:

3/31

Zombi 3
Halloween II
Hellbound: Hellraiser II

[noiseredux]

They get worse. Hellraiser is amazing. II is pretty good. Varying quality after that, though I have only seen up to 5 I believe.... but own them all.

I thought her name was Kirsty?

[Ack]

I thought her name was Kirsty?

It is. That was a typo on my end.

Also, I doubt I'll be watching anymore of the Hellraisers for this marathon, but who knows?

[Luke]

They get worse. Hellraiser is amazing.

Agree 100%.

Hope people share their pictures of their Jack-o-Lanterns this year. Picking out a pumpkin, carving it, roasting the seeds, and making use of the "pumpkin meat" is always a fun time. Unless you cut off a finger while carving the pumpkin.

[BoneSnapDeez]

I have never seen Hellraiser but have read The Hellbound Heart. It was aight.

[noiseredux]

yesterday my wife made...



...GRAVE YARD TACO DIP!!!


and we watched The Omen



couldn't recall the last time I watched this. Maybe I had never seen it in full? The first 30 mins or so I remembered but the rest was a blur. Personally I feel like it goes on for way too long. It just seems to drag for the last half hour or so. But it's good overall.

[Michi]

Dolly Dearest



Dolly Dearest is the story about a toy maker who uproots his family and moves to Mexico after he purchases an old derelict doll factory with the intention of mass-producing the hottest doll craze in recent memory (So, Cabbage Patch Kids?): Dolly Dearest.

Unfortunately, he buys this amazing factory sight-unseen (the dumbass)…


Look, ma! Actual tumbling, tumbleweeds!

…so naturally he doesn’t know about the ancient Sanzia excavation site less than 100 feet away, nor that an archeologist died a couple nights ago after inadvertently releasing a 900 year-old ancient evil that found its way into his new doll factory in the form of red, glowing, spastic, squiggly lines.


This is the first thing we see after a rather nice jump-scare, immediately negating any good karma received from said
jump-scare.

Of course, once his daughter, Jessica, is given one of the dolls that her father will mass-produce in his new Mexican sweatshop, strange things start happening to the Wade family.



This movie is a nice double whammy because it has creepy dolls and creepy children….Okay, there’s actually only one creepy child. The other one is just inflicted with that inevitable horror we all face known as puberty. So while he may not try to stab anyone, he still has his own issues.


So many, many issues.

There are several noticeable similarities here between this movie and Child’s Play, but there are also several differences. For one, Dolly doesn’t spend a lot of time talking. She does give one short speech, but the rest of the time she's muttering to herself more than anything, as opposed to a certain characters snide, snarky comments and overt death threats.

The main kids are also quite different. While Andy eventually realizes that Chucky is no good and becomes fearful of his new, killer doll, Jessica and Dolly’s relationship leads more towards the possessive. Seven-year-old Jessica, uprooted from all her friends back in the U.S., is immediately possessive of her new doll, and the evil little piece of plastic uses this to her advantage and ends up possessing the girl, turning her into a little, blond accomplice.

Also, Dolly Dearest focuses less on the doll and more on how the doll effects Jessica, and in turn how those changes effect her family. Jessica starts lashing out at anyone who tries to separate her from the doll, pushes the housekeeper when she notices she has a rosary and starts drawing violent images. And all the while, mom is the only one who notices or seems concerned about these changes, causing a rift between her and her husband, who seems to think mom is the one with issues and everything else is perfectly normal.


I beg to differ, sir.

I think one of the bigger drawbacks for me what how they portrayed the doll. Dolly is most effective and at her creepiest when she’s just in ‘Dolly’ form. Just the subtle way her eyes move or the slight turn of a head is really enough to give anyone a doll phobia. It’s an illogical action sure, yet it still seams remotely plausible. But then you go and loose some of that once the doll starts looking less like a doll and more like someone who’s had a two-pack a day habit for the last forty years.


Can I get you a *hack!*…drink, Dearie?

Dolly Dearest was a direct-to-video film (it had a limited theatrical release), so I expected a lot more cheesiness and cut corners, but it didn’t end up being as incompetent as I expected. It has a rather decent cast (Hello, Rip Thorn!) and while some of the special effects were bad (see squiggly lines above), the dolls animations were actually pretty good, considering the budget.


It’s hard for me to find too much fault to anyone who substitutes a Slim Jim for a tongue *wriggle wriggle*

The biggest flaw with Dolly Dearest is that it’s just not engaging enough and, for a slasher, has a very small kill count (3) and an even smaller pittance of gore. But I think the films biggest sin is that Dolly just doesn’t have enough presence. It showed promise, but they didn’t follow through with the character, leaving Dolly to fall and disappear into the shadow that is Chucky and that crazy ass statue from Trilogy of Terror. You can tell the creators were at least trying to make something good, but what we ended up with is a mediocre slasher that isn’t quite good enough to be good and not bad enough to make a drinking game out of it. But hey, it has its moments and at least they tried.

If you like the creepy child/doll horror sub-genre, feel free to give this a try. There are worse ways to spend your time this month. *cough*Watching anything past Hellraiser 2, Ack*cough*