Day 158: Tales From the Darkside: The Movie

Another anthology of horror, this time based on the television series that used to creep me out when I was a kid. This one hit a lot of my early Hollywood buttons more than my horror buttons.

The frame story is about a little boy who has been captured by a witch (Deborah Harry) who plans to cook him. He reads her stories from a book called Tales From the Darkside to delay his demise. The ending is darkly funny to this when he runs out of stories.

The first real story has Steve Buscemi as a researcher who has figured out how to resurrect a mummy and send him after his enemies. Julianne Moore and Christian Slater play some would-be victims until Slater figures out electric carving knives are the fastest way to deal with a mummy. Of course, things can never be easy in these stories so the end of the mummy is not the end of the tale.

The second story has Buster Poindexter (David Johanssen) as a hitman hired by an old bastard to kill a cat. The old man relates how the cat has killed everyone in the house and then the hunt is on. This has a batshit crazy ending.

The third story is about an artist witnessing a murder committed by a Gargoyle. The gargoyle makes the man promise to never tell a soul about the murder. As the artist lives in silence, his life starts turning around with fame, fortune, a beautiful wife and children. Will his guilty conscience let him keep his secret? What happens if he does tell?

So, all in all, a fun little movie. It has the same feeling as Creepshow (maybe because George Romero and Stephen King collaborated on the cat from hell story). Nothing is too serious or scary here. There are worse ways to spend a few hours.

Day 157: The Innkeepers

Like Radiohead and Wilco used to battle it out in my head as to who my favorite band is (Radiohead won some time ago), The Innkeepers and Session 9 are constantly vying for my two favorite horror movies. As of today, the Innkeepers is winning.

Ti West directed this haunted house story set in an old hotel. It is the final weekend open and two employees are sharing the duties of running it. Sara Paxton is Claire, a young woman with no direction in life who has gotten sucked into the mythology of the hotel where she works by her co-worker, Luke (Pat Healy). The hotel is supposedly haunted by a woman who died waiting for her husband on their wedding night. Claire is more than ready to spend this last weekend recording EVPs and asking empty rooms if there is anyone trying to communicate.

While Luke is the real ghost enthusiast, he gets freaked out at the slightest sign that the ghosts may be real. There are only a handful of other guests staying and each add to the creepiness in some way (a little kid makes a receptive listener for Claire's ghost stories, a past her prime movie star is versed in the occult and provides exposition, etc.).

This movie gets me so worked up, I swear I've seen things in it that aren't there. I have created whole scenes in my head that simply don't exist. Ti West makes the hotel alive with big, empty spaces and tight, claustrophobic corners at the same time. Much like Session 9, the reason I love this is because there may not be any ghosts at all. Claire gets less and less sleep as the weekend proceeds and scares herself more and more without the hotel doing anything. Is she getting a recording on the EVP, or is it a glitch? Has she seen a ghost or is she just in need of some rest? By the end, you can interpret either way, and I love that.

This movie has a slow pace (like West's House of the Devil) but it builds to a delirious crescendo of horror. For people who like lots of jump scares and guts and gore, this may not be your horror bag but for people into psychological horror, I would hold this up as the best example of the genre.

Day 156: American Psycho

More a pitch-black comedy than a horror movie, American Psycho still has plenty of horror trappings to recommend it.

Patrick Bateman is the titular psycho (as played by Christian Bale). He is concerned with his image above all other things. From his business card to his workout regimen, his fetish is one of being better than everyone around him. He hangs out and does drugs with peers who can't remember his name. He is engaged to a wonderfully blank Reese Witherspoon and flirts a lot with the ladies of the 80s. And, oh yes, he may or may not be a serial killer.

Bateman is the king of unreliable narrators and we slip in and out of his fantasies with no warning. Did he lure Jared Leto to an unused apartment to ax murder him or is Leto out of town on business? Has Bateman chosen a street hooker to torture and humiliate or is he boringly faithful to his fiance, perhaps even gay? I feel like the movie is very clear about what is real and what isn't but there are some people who would argue with a brick wall. The real point of the movie isn't whether or not this is really happening, it is all about the hollow lifestyle of consumerism that dominated the 80s.

The performances here are spot on. Bale handles the swings from quiet office cad to raging maniac very well. A lot of the violence is implied, which makes it somehow scarier. Of course, once Bale is chasing a woman with a chainsaw and buck naked save for his shoes, implication goes out the window with subtlety.

Despite being directed by a woman, lots of people claim this is a very misogynistic movie. The misogyny is there, to be sure, but it is one of the evils to be overcome rather than a source of fun.
 Not for everyone but I think it is a lot of fun.

Day 155: The Day of the Dead

This was originally meant to conclude Romero's Living Dead trilogy until he started the machine up again with Land of the Dead. Unlike racial politics of the first and the consumerism of the second, the third film in his series was all about the military industrial complex.

A small group of survivors are using a military base to scout for others. They land via helicopter, search and escape before the zombie hordes overtake them. At the underground base, scientists work with a captured zombie named Bub in an attempt to cure the zombie plague. The scientists believe brains will solve their problems and the military guys believe brawn is the way to go. There are endless caverns beneath the base where captured zombies are stored but others seem to be joining from parts unknown.

This is definitely the 80s installment of Romero's series in that everything seems pitched over the top. The movie doesn't make either side look particularly healthy. The lead scientist is conducting gruesome experiments. The military guys have only a one-track mind. Our heroes, such as they are, are fairly sensible but can think only of escape. The whole thing ends in a deadly tanglebang with very few people getting what they want. The most interesting arc of the movie is Bub, who learns how to use a gun and expresses basic emotions. The zombies becoming intelligent would get picked up on in the next movie.

I remember this one having pretty gory effects. Tom Savini, who did the effects for Dawn of the Dead, worked on this one and they are pretty brutal. Not for the faint of stomach.

Day 154:The Town that Dreaded Sundown

I had heard about this movie for years as a sort of Proto-slasher film. Coming two years before Halloween but a year after Texas Chainsaw Massacre, this one was meant to be unique because it is based on a true story.

Once I finally found an..ahem...collector's edition of this film at a comic book convention, I was able to take it in. The movie is shot with minimum competence and looks a lot like an MST3K vehicle. Sets have no decoration, just blank walls and maybe a single picture hanging somewhere. The acting is pretty stilted and the action is kind of goofy (one lady gets killed by a knife on the end of a trombone).

The idea of the killer is kind of interesting. They call him the Phantom and he wears a hood over his head. Unlike other slashers, he is just as likely to shoot you in the face as stab you. The way the investigation proceeds seems like it could have been the way a real case went (with the established pattern of the killing and the psychological insights into the killer that help not a bit). The lead investigator is called the Lone Wolf by his peers. You have the recipe for some good fiction here if only the execution weren't lacking.

As a curiosity, this movie is a fascinating example of the burgeoning slasher genre. As an actual movie you should sit down and enjoy...eh, not so much.

Day 153: Jeepers Creepers

You have to hand it to a movie that tries to add something new to the horror genre. It would be so easy to just do werewolves or vampires or zombies but to try to make a new monster is pretty bold. This isn't the smartest, shiniest or best written horror movie but it is solid and ambitious.

Gina Philips and Justin Long play a brother and sister driving back home from college to their hometown. While a couple of horror movies (like Halloween or Texas Chainsaw Massacre) have dabbled in sibling horror, this is one of the purest examples I can think of. The dynamic is just different when there are two adult siblings being stalked rather than lovers or would-be lovers or even parents and children. Long and Philips get curious about a weird car that passes them and eventually find an old church where the car parks. Inside, all sorts of horror awaits and that kicks off the chase portion of the movie.

The creature, who, sure, I'll call Jeepers Creepers, is a weird sort of patchwork demon who regenerates his body by taking body parts from living people. That he drives an old car and dresses like a cowboy seems to be incidental. In the sequel, they would explore his extra abilities like flight, but here, they stick to his gruesome habit of collecting prey.

Will the siblings escape with all their body parts? You'll have to watch to see. There are worse ways to spend a weekend afternoon but this isn't a modern classic.

Day 152: Crimson Peak

This was a polarizing one for even die hard fans of Del Toro. I enjoyed it for what it was and not what I wanted it to be but your mileage may vary.

A young woman who knows a thing or two about ghosts (having seen her own mother return as one when she was a child) falls in love with the Baron of a remote estate. Despite her father's objections (eventually silenced by a brutal murder), she marries the Baron and moves with him to Europe. Their mansion has a giant hole in the roof and the ground bleeds red clay. The old house is full of secrets and ghosts but really, as the protagonist herself says, this is a story with ghosts and not a ghost story.

Mia Wasikowski as the main protagonist does a fan job despite acting against Tom HIddleston and Jessica Chastain (both of whom bring their A games). The ghost designs are compelling but they actually hurt another Del Toro movie in retrospect. In The Devil's Backbone, the main ghost of a little drowned boy looks like he is always underwater. In Crimson Peak, all the ghosts look like they are underwater whether they died in water or not. That's apparently just how Del Toro wants to see his ghosts.

At any rate, the gothic romance outstrips the horror here but the resolution is sufficiently bloody to make most genre fans happy. For people expecting gore or even more hardcore horror, this may not be the movie for you.