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  1. Bob McLaughlin

    *** Official 12th Annual HTF October Scary Movie Challenge 2011 ***

    Well guys it was lots of fun again but it's over and it's time to recap. Best use of gore: Midnight Meat Train Best use of sound: YellowBrickRoad Scariest: Hidden Most artistic: Antichrist Pleasant surprise: Burning Bright Best overall: Stakeland Bob's A-Z 2011 Horror Movie Marathon, Final List...
  2. Bob McLaughlin

    *** Official 12th Annual HTF October Scary Movie Challenge 2011 ***

    33. 7eventy 5ive (aka Dead Tone) (2007) (first (and last) time viewing) Ugh. The marathon ends on a crappy note with easily the worst movie of the month. College kids at a party play a crank-call game called "75" (the number of seconds you have to keep the victim on the line before they get wise...
  3. Bob McLaughlin

    *** Official 12th Annual HTF October Scary Movie Challenge 2011 ***

    32. 2001 Maniacs (2006) (first-time viewing) This was shlock, but it was intended to be shlock, and it works pretty well. This is basically a remake of the Herschel Gordon Lewis 1964 film "2000 Maniacs" but with self-awareness and humor. A group of snotty young college kids headed for spring...
  4. Bob McLaughlin

    *** Official 12th Annual HTF October Scary Movie Challenge 2011 ***

    Once again, I am behind on writing my reviews, but not behind on my daily movie viewing! 28. 5ive Girls (2006) (first-time viewing) Five girls, each with a special supernatural power, are sent to a very strict Catholic academy to cure them of their evil. The priest (Ron Perlman) isn't so strict...
  5. Bob McLaughlin

    *** Official 12th Annual HTF October Scary Movie Challenge 2011 ***

    27. Four Flies on Grey Velvet (1971) (first-time viewing) Minor entry from the vast Argento canon, but not bad at all, full of his trademark flourishes--a killer in the shadows, eyeball violence, sexual tension. A rock star accidentally kills a man, only to realize his actions have been caught...
  6. Bob McLaughlin

    *** Official 12th Annual HTF October Scary Movie Challenge 2011 ***

    26. Zoo (2005) (first-time viewing) A Japanese collection of dark tales. While all contain some elements of horror, these are really more along the lines of a "Twilight Zone" sensibility. None of the installments are stellar, but a few of them are worthwhile. My favorites were the one where an...
  7. Bob McLaughlin

    *** Official 12th Annual HTF October Scary Movie Challenge 2011 ***

    25. YellowBrickRoad (2010) (first-time viewing) I have to give YellowBrickRoad credit for at least trying to do something new with the "lost in the woods and something is OUT THERE" genre. The premise is kinda Blair-Witchy: in 1940, the population of an entire small town in New Hampshire walks...
  8. Bob McLaughlin

    *** Official 12th Annual HTF October Scary Movie Challenge 2011 ***

    24. X: The Unknown (1956) (first-time viewing) Two years before the Americans made "The Blob", those crafty British had already given us "X: The Unknown". The British army uncovers a mysterious fissure in the earth, which ultimately turns out to be home to a radioactive blob of mud that rises...
  9. Bob McLaughlin

    *** Official 12th Annual HTF October Scary Movie Challenge 2011 ***

    22. The Valley of Gwangi (1969) (first-time viewing) Cowboys and dinosaurs! This is a very entertaining monster film featuring some of Ray Harryhausen's best stop-animation work. A scientist and a circus vie to capture a creature from an isolated Mexican valley where dinosaurs never went...
  10. Bob McLaughlin

    *** Official 12th Annual HTF October Scary Movie Challenge 2011 ***

    21. The Unborn (2003) (first-time viewing) Uninvolving "long hair over the face" Asian horror mystery. I've seen too many good Asian horror movies to know this one isn't even close in quality to any of them. This movie suffers from a complete lack of sympathetic characters--not sure who we were...
  11. Bob McLaughlin

    *** Official 12th Annual HTF October Scary Movie Challenge 2011 ***

    20. Tales that Witness Madness (1973) (first-time viewing) A more apt title might have been "Tales that Induce Sleepiness". Four "horror" segments (plus the requisite framing story) revolve around the patients of an asylum. The first is about a boy with an imaginary friend who is a tiger, the...
  12. Bob McLaughlin

    *** Official 12th Annual HTF October Scary Movie Challenge 2011 ***

    19. Stake Land (2010) (first-time viewing) What a great new horror movie! Plot-wise this is a mixture of films like "28 Days Later" and "The Road", or perhaps "Zombieland" with none of the humor--a teenage boy pairs up with a tough vampire killer in a post-apocalyptic U.S.A. What sets this movie...
  13. Bob McLaughlin

    *** Official 12th Annual HTF October Scary Movie Challenge 2011 ***

    18. Rabid (1977) (first-time viewing) David Cronenberg directs porn-star Marilyn Chambers, solidifying his reputation as the master of "venereal horror". A motorcyle accident victim gets an experimental skin graft operation that goes wrong, giving her a sharp appendage hidden under her armpit...
  14. Bob McLaughlin

    *** Official 12th Annual HTF October Scary Movie Challenge 2011 ***

    17. Queen of Blood (1966) (first-time viewing) Astronauts in the year 1990 responding to the distress call of a strange planet find a lone alien with a thirst for human blood. Unfortunately about an hour goes by before we even get to see the alien, and when we do, it's a woman with a beehive...
  15. Bob McLaughlin

    *** Official 12th Annual HTF October Scary Movie Challenge 2011 ***

    Very busy weekend, but I did watch all my movies, I just didn't have time to post reviews here... 14. Night of the Living Dead (1968) Often imitated, never duplicated, this classic horror film is one I can watch any time, and often do. Not much needs to be said here except every time I view this...
  16. Bob McLaughlin

    *** Official 12th Annual HTF October Scary Movie Challenge 2011 ***

    13. Midnight Meat Train (2008) (first-time viewing) It seems inappropriate to call a movie as dark and brutal as this "a breath of fresh air", but that's what it is, at least to the tired modern horror genre. This movie set out to create its own unique horror mythos and a new iconic bad guy, and...
  17. Bob McLaughlin

    *** Official 12th Annual HTF October Scary Movie Challenge 2011 ***

    12. The Last Exorcism (2010) (first-time viewing) A preacher fed up with faking exorcisms for people who are faking being posessed announces his plans to retire from the craft. He has a film crew join him for his final exorcism, only to find he's finally run into the real thing--an actual...
  18. Bob McLaughlin

    *** Official 12th Annual HTF October Scary Movie Challenge 2011 ***

    I just saw this for the first time last month, and while I'd rate it a little bit higher (maybe 2 or 2.5?), you hit the mark pretty well with your review. Another think that struck me as being bizarre about this movie is the tone: it really feels like a movie that was made for kids, but it's far...
  19. Bob McLaughlin

    *** Official 12th Annual HTF October Scary Movie Challenge 2011 ***

    11. Kill Theory (2009) (first-time viewing) Chris Moore (producer of "Feast") directed this above-average thriller. It starts out as a routine slasher, but it has a nice twist. 8 college kids in a remote cottage are given an ulimatum by a mysterious psychopath: one of them must kill the others...
  20. Bob McLaughlin

    *** Official 12th Annual HTF October Scary Movie Challenge 2011 ***

    10. The Janitor (2003) This shot-on-video horror comedy is very low-budget, very tasteless, and often quite funny. An outcast office janitor with anger management issues goes on a bloody rampage against everyone who crosses him. Things only get worse when his janitor buddy betrays him, stealing...
  21. Bob McLaughlin

    *** Official 12th Annual HTF October Scary Movie Challenge 2011 ***

    9. I Can See You (2008) This movie is rated 100 on Rotten Tomatoes, which is an amazing feat considering how strange and unclassifiable it is. On its surface, it's about a trio of guys trying to land a big advertising contract who decide to take a camping retreat to help clear their minds. Of...
  22. Bob McLaughlin

    *** Official 12th Annual HTF October Scary Movie Challenge 2011 ***

    He didn't add anything, it was the original publisher that forced him to remove hundreds of pages the first time around. Later when King had more publishing clout he was able to get the original full manuscript published.
  23. Bob McLaughlin

    *** Official 12th Annual HTF October Scary Movie Challenge 2011 ***

    7. The Ghoul (1933) (first-time viewing) A stern title card from the British Board of Censors at the beginning of this movie should have warned me I was about to be ripped off. This was the British attempt to get in on the early 30's horror boom started by Dracula, Frankenstein, and The Mummy...
  24. Bob McLaughlin

    *** Official 12th Annual HTF October Scary Movie Challenge 2011 ***

    Repulsion I would definitely consider horror. It's scarier than many so-called horror movies I have seen, and very disturbing as well--particularly for women. If people are going to call "Rosemary's Baby" horror based on the last 5 minutes (and one dream sequence) of that movie, then Repulsion...
  25. Bob McLaughlin

    *** Official 12th Annual HTF October Scary Movie Challenge 2011 ***

    6. Frontier(s) (first-time viewing) And speaking of dreary torture porn, we have the French to thank for Frontier(s). Not sure why they need the parentheses around the "s", what is it with the French, they did the same with the title "Fear(s) of the Dark"? Anyway, as torture porns go, this one...
  26. Bob McLaughlin

    *** Official 12th Annual HTF October Scary Movie Challenge 2011 ***

    I also watched "The Horrors of Stephen King" on TCM, it was pretty good!
  27. Bob McLaughlin

    *** Official 12th Annual HTF October Scary Movie Challenge 2011 ***

    5. Evil Dead 2 Director Sam Raimi takes splatter and combines it with slapstick, giving birth the the "splatstick" genre which later gave us such fine films from "Brain Dead" (aka "Dead Alive") to "Shaun of the Dead". This is also the first movie where we get to see Bruce Campbell really ham it...
  28. Bob McLaughlin

    *** Official 12th Annual HTF October Scary Movie Challenge 2011 ***

    4. Dead of Night (first-time viewing) Nothing like a good old-fashioned horror anthology from the 1970's! This trio of terror isn't bad, but a low budget and a "made for TV" feel keep it from being great. Richard Matheson penned all three installments, so the stories are excellent, although some...
  29. Bob McLaughlin

    *** Official 12th Annual HTF October Scary Movie Challenge 2011 ***

    3. The Crimson Cult (aka Curse of the Crimson Altar) (first-time viewing) In its opening 10 minutes, this film tries too hard to convince us it's going to be edgy and hip (a topless dominatrix, a title card talking about the effects of psychedelic drugs, a "swingers" party scene), but that can't...
  30. Bob McLaughlin

    *** Official 12th Annual HTF October Scary Movie Challenge 2011 ***

    2. Burning Bright (first-time viewing) If you can get over the contrived setup--a young woman and her autistic younger brother are stuck in a boarded-up house during a hurricane with a starving tiger--you will enjoy this little thriller. Personally I went along for the ride and had a great time...
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