Sunday, October 31, 2004

Halloween Recommendations

No longer hosting Halloween parties will have the blessed result of giving me back my favorite holiday--instead of spending two days cleaning and cooking and setting up and then another cleaning and tearing down, I'll be able to actually watch scary movies! Even better, I'll be able to read favorite authors. I like nothing better than cuddling up with



or



or



and going on a mind-trip. I've always liked being scared, and used to purposefully terrify myself as a child with movies I knew would keep me awake at night--Channel 17 in PA used to have a cheesy show on Saturdays called Dr. Shock's Mad Theater. I'd watch the Karloff The Mummy or a Hammer film and be climbing the walls. The TV miniseries of Salem's Lot with David Soul? Holy fucking shit--that scared me to DEATH (and no wonder, given its director--Tobe Hooper of Texas Chainsaw fame).

Here's some recent Netflix:



was ok--I went into this with low expectations. I'm very leary when it comes to remakes of favorite horror films. This one doesn't replace Romero's original, nor does it match the delicately balanced satire and monolithic bleakness of the previous version; but the opening sequence of the remake is very effective. I've seen few cinematic versions of apocalypse so convincing, and having an infected young girl from next door viciously bite the heroine's mate on the neck--just awful. And I mean good awful, as in very disturbing and effective. These aren't the typical shambling, confused zombies which you can elude easily if they don't gang up on you. Today's zombies are fast, smart, and just as relentless as their '70s counterparts. They're cable modem zombies compared to Romero's 56k--I wonder if some Cultural Studies grad student is working up a thesis on the sociological implications/causes of the new fast-zombie film model.

Every character is a type, every bit of dialogue is instantly forgettable, but since everyone gets eaten or blown up or infected it's ok. My favorite scene had the great Tom Savini as a yahoo sheriff interviewed about the plague on TV.



is one of those Carpenter films which doesn't really work for a variety of reasons, but I enjoyed it and found much of the first half interesting. Sad to see Chris Reeve so young and chiseled just months before his accident. I would recommend this for fans of Carpenter's other obscure work--if you don't like In the Mouth of Madness or Prince of Darkness, you're not likely to care for this one.



I'm pleased to see my favorite genre horror writer back with a new novel--some of his work the last 15 years or so has been less than interesting (Nazareth Hill for example), but his most recent novels have begun to approach the sort of dreamy hallucinatory descriptive power Campbell wielded so effectively in early works like Incarnate, The Face that Must Die, Obsession, and The Doll Who Ate its Mother. I'll read it over the Xmas break. Nobody else so ably manifests a paranoid character's debilitated worldview, and unlike Clive Barker or Steve King, Campbell can craft a sentence, instead of just throwing words at the reader.

7 comments:

Nick said...

I'm glad that you enjoyed VoD. Since you are the only other human being to know of it how did you enjoy the breathtaking shots of the California valleys shrouded in mist? Beautiful! And just as good--the bar-b-q'd man!!! Chris reeve is excellent: BRICK WALL. I know, some things just don't work, and the alien in a jar really missed but I like that film. I like all of Carpenter's work, I wish he was up to something but he seems to have dropped out of the game entirely. Well at least I have new films by Jackson, Kar Wei, Raimi, Chow and Bird to obsess about.

Well it kind of came down to the Complete M.R. James or Complete Start Trek for xmas. The Holy Trinity of Bones, Spock, and Kirk defeat all in the vast holocaust plain of my heart--once again. M.R. James--nice to see him mentioned Hup!

Well I'm sorry to hear about the end of your Halloween parties but I can't blame you. I'm also sorry that we couldn't swing by.

Geoff said...

You guys were missed last night--and my niece and nephew missed T. too!

The first 20 minutes of VoD were remarkably well-shot/well-blocked. The way he handled the intervention or impregnation or however you want to term the event in the town was excellent. Great editing, great use of light. BBQ'd guy was a nice touch.

That really little actress who played Reeve's daughter as a toddler freaked me out. Boiling water scene? Demonic. The nod that pushes Mom over the edge? Too much.

Nick said...

Aw damn! Sorry we missed out--and doubly sorry we won't be able to try to actually have a decent costume next year. We were hoping to do Kirk and Yeoman Rand, HA style but didn't have the time.

VoD IS good--glad I wasn't just fooling myself.

We didn't get back from shopping until 9:30 last night and we were tired. After we ate I put in a tape the Dazzling Urbanite made for me years ago w/Busby Berkley/L. and Hardy and B. Keaton on it and Taran ate it up until almost midnight--so much for an early evening anyway! That L. and H. is so good and it was a treat to see him getting into it so much. He really liked seven chances too--which has some subtle stuff going on. Keaton is wonderful. Later--going trick and treating. I'll tell Taran that he was missed...

Geoff said...

Good costume idea--heh heh.

I have several mix VHS tapes MH/DU made from laser--all of them good. He gave me a ton of Keaton (I also own a boxset on VHS) and that stuff really is great. I haven't seen Laurel and Hardy since I was a bit older than Taran, if you can believe that.

Marc J. Hampton said...

Did any of you watch Bravo this weekend? They had a countdown of the "100 Scariest Moments in Film History". Good stuff--they had comments from a fairly diverse crowd like Carpenter, Tom Savini, George Romero, Stephen King, and even actors who have suffered under the gore, like Bruce Campbell, Carol Kane, Courteney Cox, Adrienne King (heroine from the original "Friday The Thirteenth"--she actually tells a very funny story involving her mom at the advance screening, who nearly had a cardiac arrest during the final scene), many others.

The list introduced me to some films I have never seen--"Don't Look Back," "The Tenant," "Wicker Man," "The Sentinal." Very high on the list was "Audition," which I am waiting patiently for from Netflix.

The clips they showed throughout were full-on, unedited, and violent as hell.

The snob in me was ready to pounce all over the list, but they tipped their hat to almost every film I would have included--"Suspiria," "Nosferatu," "Diabolique", "Marathon
Man," "Wizard of Oz," etc.

Some oddities: "The Game," "Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory," "Fatal Attraction," "Signs."

#1 was "Jaws". Whatever. I understand its inclusion but #1 is stretching things.

Nick said...

G-I believe it, I hadn't seen any of that stuff since I was a kid either. You should come and see the L&H one which was Big Business (christmas tree). I had not seen it before D>U. gave it to me-- it's a riot.

D.U.--I'm too poor to get cable or satellite! I would have enjoyed wasting my time with it though...is Audition by Miike? Did they show the boat scene from Willy Wonka? And Signs--was it the mexican birthday footage? It is very subjective--Jaws is only good if you have a fear of sharks, otherwise it's just some Ahab shit. You'd be proud, somehow we got the 4 disc set of Suspiria here at the library and EVERY time someone asks for a recommendation I give them that--no explanation. Silly students.

Geoff said...

I'm with Faulty Landscape on the cable--but we pay Comcast 10 bucks a month to pipe in the broadcast channels, and mysteriously they give us basic cable on and off. We actually have had it for a month again, but I missed the Bravo thing. Sounds actually pretty good. I guess they can justify Jaws by the fact that it freaked people out bad. My asinine biological father took me to see it at OC when I was 7 years old!

I just saw the top 13 from the Bravo list--they look reasonable, though I've never seen Wait Until Dark.

Audition is Miike. I'd like to check out others because I hear his gangster movies are also ridiculously intense.