Directed By: Tommy Lee Wallace
” I do love a good joke and this is the best ever: a joke on the children.”
No, it’s not named after the fantastic Donovan track, it’s one of the most bizarre sequels in all of filmdom.
Horror
Night #28: Scream 4 (2011)
Directed By: Wes Craven (Hello again Wes!)
“Fuck Bruce Willis.”
“Almost there” is a pretty frustrating place to be in movie terms. An idea that’s not fully realised can sometimes be as bad as not having one at all. Such is the case with Scream 4. A movie that, despite its faults, is still better than Scream 3.
Night #27: The Awakening (2011)
Directed By: Nick Murphy
“There’s no place on earth people understand loneliness better than here.”
The best ghost stories are ostensibly about the characters themselves who are haunted, not just a creepy building out in the middle of nowhere. The Devil’s Backbone and Pulse are as much about their characters mindsets as they are things going bump in the night. The Awakening follows in those footsteps and crafts a nice place for itself in the pantheon of ghost stories.
Night #26: A Bay of Blood (1971)
Directed By: Mario Bava
“They came to play, they stayed to die!” — Not a quote, but one of the taglines.
It’s always interesting when you see something that’s both new and yet familiar. You watch something like Nosferatu or The Cabinet of Dr Caligari and you can see the influence that it’s had throughout the years. Images and ideas that were seen, processed and twisted into something else years later have those classic movies in their DNA. So watching them for the first time can sometimes mean you don’t appreciate it the same way you might’ve if you’d seen it on release. Instead there’s a nod of appreciation, and familiarity, but nothing more.
Night #24: Creepshow (1982)
Directed By: George A. Romero
“That’s a meteor. I’ll be dipped in shit if that ain’t a meteor!”
I’ve talked previously about the pantheon of great anthology films, which is a sadly short list. But on it would be this entry from George Romero. Typically in an anthology film different sequences would be handled by different writers/directors (I believe in the case of VHS they didn’t even meet, except to briefly make sure that no one had come up with the same idea twice). So, not only does it have one directorial voice but it also comes from the pen of Stephen King, who always stars in one of the sequences. I’m not sure if this was during his drink/drug phase but after viewing his segment I wouldn’t be surprised.
Night #23: Children of the Corn (2009)
Directed By: Donald P Borchers
“I spy, with my little eye, something that starts with C.”
Yep, kids are still creepy.
Night #22: Children of the Corn (1984)
Directed By: Fritz Kiersch
“I spy, with my little eye, something that starts with C.”
Children are creepy. It’s a fact. We all know this so we shouldn’t stop pretending.
Night #21: The Mummy’s Curse (1944)
Directed By: Leslie Goodwins
“The devil’s alive and he’s dancing with the mummy.”
Are Mummy’s scary? No. That didn’t stop Universal churning out these pictures though. This is the 4th sequel to The Mummy and the absence from the Universal box set is not really an accident.
Night #20: Halloween H20 (1998)
Directed By: Steve Miner
“Oh, we’ve got a psychotic serial killer in the family who loves to butcher people on Halloween, and I just thought it in bad taste to celebrate.”
I guess we’re in an unofficial sequel run this week, which suits me fine. It was during a Netflix browse (Where usually there’s too much choice for me to make a committed decision) that I realised I’d never actually seen this sequel to the great Halloween.
Night #19: Final Destination 5 (2011)
Directed By: Steven Quale
“Death… doesn’t like to be cheated.”
Here’s a novel concept: A slasher movie in which we never see the killer. I don’t mean we don’t see his face, I mean we don’t see him – it – at all. Sound good? Then do I have a popular series for you!
Is This Thing On? 