BLAKK'S HALLOWEEN 13!
When I was a kid, one of my favorite things was to walk through a lawn covered with dead leaves. The crunchy, crackly sound of my feet shuffling through them was music to my ears. Fall is my favorite season, and though the Falls of my youth aren't the same out here in sunny California, my mind is still drawn back to those days.
An annual event here at Blakk's Blog is my posting of 13 horror movies I've seen in the last year that I want to recommend to you in case you are lost for ideas for Halloween viewing. And here we go!
1. THE BABY'S ROOM (a.k.a. LA HABITACION DEL NINO)
This year, Lionsgate put out a 6 disc dvd boxed set called 6 FILMS TO KEEP YOU AWAKE. These were Spanish horror films that they picked up the distribution rights to and released together. Some of them are very good and you'll find 3 titles on this list. This is the first. Juan, his wife and their infant son move into an old house. They put a video baby monitor in their son's room, and one night Juan wakes up to see a dark figure standing over his son's crib. When he rushes in, there is no one there. This happens night after night, and his wife moves out, thinking her husband is going insane. But is he? And if not, who or what is in the house?
2. A CHRISTMAS TALE
Another film from Lionsgate's 6 FILMS TO KEEP YOU AWAKE series, this movie is about 5 kids who discover a woman in a Santa Claus suit trapped in a deep hole in the woods. They find out that she is a dangerous bank robber and refuse to help her out of the hole until she tells them where the stolen money is. One night, two of the boys who are horror fans, see a zombie ritual in a movie on TV and recite it over the hole. A few days later, the woman dies, but when they come back the next day, the body is gone... Imagine Quentin Tarantino writing THE GOONIES, and you have a pretty good idea of what this movie is. It starts off very sweet, but gets darker and darker as it goes along, showing off the evil side of kids.
3. DANCE OF THE DEAD
Imagine if John Hughes directed RETURN OF THE LIVING DEAD, and you get a good idea of this fun, breezy movie. The graveyard next to a nuclear power plant has a problem: the dead keep coming back to life and have to be killed again by the caretaker. But one night, they come back to life in large numbers and break out, invading the nearby small town on prom night. Only a small group of losers who didn't get dates know about the zombie invasion and can put a stop to it. Lots of likeable characters, fun effects and scary/funny situations.
4. HATCHET
Among horror fans, this is the film you either like or despise. I liked it. It's a horror-comedy, but it is viciously aggressive and gory. In New Orleans during Mardi Gras, two college guys take a spooky swamp tour. Their boat and all its passengers get scuttled in the woods where a killer known as Hatchetface beings chopping them up with his axe. The film looks great, and the comedy blends well with the horror. This was one of the goriest films I've seen this year.
5. THE MIST
Based on the Stephen King story, a large group of people are trapped inside a supermarket when a wall of mist covers the town. There are also bizarre creatures in the mist, but they may not be as bad as some of the people inside the store who, led by a psychotic evangelical, plan to appease God by placing blame...and doing some unspeakable things. Very realistic depiction of how a society in crisis might break down, with lots of creatures. The movie is probably best known for its controversial ending, which I must warn you is very, very dark. Not a "fun" horror film, but definitely intense.
6. PATHOLOGY
A bright young doctor attends a medical university's pathology program and gets seduced into a secret group of students who play a game: they kill people they think deserve to die in clever ways, then bring the body back to their group for the others to determine in an autopsy how the person was killed. When the doctor's fiancee comes to live with him, he wants out of the game, but the others aren't so eager for him to leave. Heroes star Milo Ventimiglia plays the doctor and shows his small, hard, round ass in a couple of sex scenes. Lots of autopsy gore. I thought the screenplay was clever.
7. A REAL FRIEND
My last pick from Lionsgates' 6 FILMS TO KEEP YOU AWAKE series concerns a little girl who has no friends, so she creates imaginary ones. She's a horror movie lover and watches them when her mom's not around, so her imaginary playmates are Leatherface and Nosferatu! She meets a pale bald man who reminds her of Nosferatu, and she nicknames her new friend "Vampire." One night, she brings him home to meet her mother, and things don't go the way she planned. Will her imaginary friends come to her rescue? A dreamy, atmospheric movie, and the shots of the little girl playing with Leatherface from TEXAS CHAIN SAW MASSACRE are unsettling.
8. SOCKET
Honestly, this movie isn't that great, but it's been a lean year for good horror, and like the superior HELLBENT, this is a gay horror film with some interesting ideas. A doctor is struck by lightning and tended to in the hospital by a male nurse who has also been struck by lightning. He introduces the doctor to a small secret group of people also zapped by lightning bolts who meet to "juice" themselves with electric charges. This becomes an obsession with the two men, who become lovers, to the point where the doctor surgically implants an electric prong in his wrist (and a socket in his boyfriend) so they can "plug in" to each other. When the doctor accidently kills a mugger by draining him of his energy, he finds that he now urgently craves the bio-electric charge of other humans. Look, the acting is hit-and-miss, the direction is average, the videography is so-so, and it stars Matthew Montgomery who is in every shot-on-video gay independent movie today, but the idea is intriguing. It's as if a gay David Cronenberg wrote the script. Worth a watch.
9. TARGETS
Directed by and co-starring Peter Bogdanovich, this film deals with modern horror. Fright film star Byron Orlok (played by Boris Karloff) wants to retire because he thinks there's no room for vampires and monsters in this new age of everyday horror that you see on the news. He is contractually bound to make a final appearance at a drive-in theater on the same night where a psychotic Vietnam vet sniper is also perched, ready to shoot people. Thrilling and engrossing, this is a film that I'd heard a lot about, but never saw until a few months ago, and I loved it.
10. TEETH
Did HARD CANDY make you keep your legs crossed during the castration scene? If so, then TEETH will shrivel your dick up permanently. A teenage girl discovers she has teeth in her vagina, which bite off the dicks of any boy who fucks her. This is mostly a black comedy, but the plight of the girl who discovers that she's not like everyone else was heartfelt. I wonder if you could use this movie to help seduce a straight man?
11. VACANCY
A married couple on the verge of divorce are traveling through a remote part of the country when they have car trouble, forcing them to stay at a secluded motel in the woods. Once in their room, someone beings pounding on their doors, and the movie kicks into high gear and never lets up.
12. WRESTLEMANIAC
Now, with a title like this, I was all set to hate this film, but I was pleasantly surprised by how much I liked it. A van full of six people drive through Mexico looking for a place to shoot a porno. They come across a ghost town where a psychotic Frankensteinian Mexican wrestler killed all the occupants and is rumored to still live there. Paying the legend no heed, the young people begin to shoot their video and find themselves being picked off one by one by a killer. Lots of fun.
And finally, the film I'm going to watch on Halloween night...
13. THE STRANGERS
I have not seen this movie. I missed it at the theaters, so it will be my viewing choice tomorrow night with CVK. NICK CAPRA is also coming over to watch it, so I'll let you know how that goes. I've heard great things about it. I've heard it's creepy, and the commercials are very spine-tingly.
HAPPY HALLOWEEN!
JBK
I'm intrigued by the plot of Teeth.
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Can you imagine a gay porn version? talk about instant flop! On many counts!
JBK
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