***Official 19th Annual HTF October Scary Movie Challenge 2018*** (1 Viewer)

[Malcolm R]

The Night Evelyn Came Out of the Grave

One of my all-time favorite titles for a movie.

 

[Neil Middlemiss]

October 22: The Fly (1986) - 4.5 out of 5

Seth Brundle (Jeff Goldblum) has made a grand scientific discovery, but it isn't quite ready for release to the world. His discovery, teleportation, is nearly complete and he has invited a beautiful journalist (Geena Davis) to document the last steps. But, when one of his experiments goes awry, he begins a catastrophic transformation.

Jeff Goldblum's portrayal of Seth Brundle, the doomed scientist accidentally spliced with a common housefly during a test of his teleportation device, is just about perfect. His transformation from awkward, socially inept scientist to the aggressive, out of control man confused and astonished by the changes he experiences, is so compelling As the fly elements assert themselves in his body, the deterioration is both fascinating and gross, Cronenberg's forte! Geena Davis is brilliant as the confident journalist who falls for Brundle, growing in concern over his behavior changes and uncertainty over what it all means.

The Fly remake has always been a powerful film experience for me. I was only 12 when I first saw it and it made quite the impression. The performances stand out more to me that it did in my youth but the entire film remains one of the greatest remakes ever. Cronenberg brings to bear the very best of his inclinations here, a doomed love story, a distortion of the human body by means science/technology, and an aching sense of tragedy. I firmly believe this is Cronenberg's finest film and Howard Shore's score, a blend of violent strings and tragic harmonies, remains a favorite.

And this wraps up my Cronenberg binge for this year

 

[EricSchulz]

#021. Sleepaway Camp (FTV) What the F*CK did I just watch? It certainly wasn’t scary. It tried to be a comedy, I think. But it failed miserably. Poorly acted (what’s the problem with the aunt and why is she yelling all her lines? Horrendous effects. And a plot that will have YOU saying “what the F*CK did I just watch?” 0/5 stars

 

[TravisR]

Even for me, I watched a ridiculous amount of movies yesterday and today.

58. Halloween H20

Michael returns to kill Laurie and her son at a private school 20 years later. It's great seeing Jamie Lee Curtis again but I don't like this movie very much.


59. Halloween: Resurrection

A group of kids webcasts from the Myers on Halloween night. A terrible movie and somehow not the worst of the series (Halloween 5).


With less than 10 days left, I don't feel a need to watch the Rob Zombie Halloweens (though the first isn't that bad) so I decided to go to Camp Blood.

60. Friday The 13th (1980) (unrated cut)

An unseen killer stalks counselors preparing to reopen a summer camp. Gory and suspenseful. The beginning of my overall favorite series of slasher movies.


61. Friday The 13th Part 2

Five years later, a group of kids at a counselor training center are stalked by Jason. I love the look of the sack that Jason wears and that the camp seems to be in the same general area (unlike the rest of the sequels) as the original movie. One of the best movies in the series.


62. Friday The 13th Part 3

Jason kills kids vacationing at a secluded house in the woods. Jason getting the mask is a highlight of the movie. The rest of the movie is just OK. The weakest of the first four movies.


63. Friday The 13th: The Final Chapter

Jason kills even more kids vacationing at another secluded house in the woods but this time, there's a boy who stops him. Gory and actually fairly suspenseful, I think this is the best movie in the series (edging out Part 2).


64. Friday The 13th: A New Beginning

A killer stalks kids at a halfway house for troubled youth. Lousy sequel where the director thinks that F13 movies are nothing more than killing, nudity & cursing and so he dumped a ton of those things into the movie and that's exactly what makes this movie interesting to watch. I guess it's so bad that it's good.


65. Friday The 13th: Part VI- Jason Lives

Jason lives and he returns to Camp Crystal Lake to kill counselors. Fun sequel that adds some humor and Alice Cooper songs(!).


66. Friday The 13th: Part VII- The New Blood

A telekinetic teen accidentally brings Jason back from the dead and he starts killing kids vacationing at yet another secluded house in the woods. There's some good kills in this movie and Kane Hodder is a great Jason but I don't like this movie (though it's definitely a favorite of many F13 fans).


67. Friday The 13th: Part VIII- Jason Takes Manhattan

Jason returns again and this time, he kills kids on a graduation cruise to New York City. Another bad sequel that's badness makes it interesting to watch. Maybe I'm just a masochist.

 

[Malcolm R]

Cucuy: The Boogeyman B
You better behave.

Kids are disappearing and the police are stumped. They finally get a lead on a possible kidnapper, but Sofia thinks it may be the Cucuy, a legendary Mexican boogeyman who snatches children who misbehave and takes them back to its cave to eat them. It's just a myth to scare children to be good, isn't it? Or is it a horrifying reality?

Some nice creature work elevates this over the usual SyFy film. The FX seem largely practical, and are quite effective and creepy, though the monster's mask does look a little rubbery at times. The film has an interesting hook tying a monster of legend to modern day social media and cyberbullying. Overall a decent surprise on SyFy's 31 Days of Halloween.

 

[dpippel]

Even for me, I watched a ridiculous amount of movies yesterday and today.

58. Halloween H20

Michael returns to kill Laurie and her son at a private school 20 years later. It's great seeing Jamie Lee Curtis again but I don't like this movie very much.


59. Halloween: Resurrection

A group of kids webcasts from the Myers on Halloween night. A terrible movie and somehow not the worst of the series (Halloween 5).


With less than 10 days left, I don't feel a need to watch the Rob Zombie Halloweens (though the first isn't that bad) so I decided to go to Camp Blood.

60. Friday The 13th (1980) (unrated cut)

An unseen killer stalks counselors preparing to reopen a summer camp. Gory and suspenseful. The beginning of my overall favorite series of slasher movies.


61. Friday The 13th Part 2

Five years later, a group of kids at a counselor training center are stalked by Jason. I love the look of the sack that Jason wears and that the camp seems to be in the same general area (unlike the rest of the sequels) as the original movie. One of the best movies in the series.


62. Friday The 13th Part 3

Jason kills kids vacationing at a secluded house in the woods. Jason getting the mask is a highlight of the movie. The rest of the movie is just OK. The weakest of the first four movies.


63. Friday The 13th: The Final Chapter

Jason kills even more kids vacationing at another secluded house in the woods but this time, there's a boy who stops him. Gory and actually fairly suspenseful, I think this is the best movie in the series (edging out Part 2).


64. Friday The 13th: A New Beginning

A killer stalks kids at a halfway house for troubled youth. Lousy sequel where the director thinks that F13 movies are nothing more than killing, nudity & cursing and so he dumped a ton of those things into the movie and that's exactly what makes this movie interesting to watch. I guess it's so bad that it's good.


65. Friday The 13th: Part VI- Jason Lives

Jason lives and he returns to Camp Crystal Lake to kill counselors. Fun sequel that adds some humor and Alice Cooper songs(!).


66. Friday The 13th: Part VII- The New Blood

A telekinetic teen accidentally brings Jason back from the dead and he starts killing kids vacationing at yet another secluded house in the woods. There's some good kills in this movie and Kane Hodder is a great Jason but I don't like this movie (though it's definitely a favorite of many F13 fans).


67. Friday The 13th: Part VIII- Jason Takes Manhattan

Jason returns again and this time, he kills kids on a graduation cruise to New York City. Another bad sequel that's badness makes it interesting to watch. Maybe I'm just a masochist.

Good LORD!!!!

 

[TravisR]

Good LORD!!!!

I was going to say "Well, that was over 2 days so it was only 5 movies a day" but I realized that doesn't really make it sound better.

 

[dpippel]

 

[dpippel]

OCTOBER 22:

16) Re-Animator (1985) - 3/5 stars - I hadn't seen this movie for over 20 YEARS until last night, and it was still pretty good. Jeffrey Combs makes it so, and the Arrow Limited Edition Blu-ray is quite nice. Lots of over-the-top gore. Adding some additional strangeness to the experience is the fact that Barbara Crampton, who plays Megan Halsey in the film, is a dead-ringer for my ex-wife! They could quite literally be sisters. It was a little bizarre to say the least!

 

[Malcolm R]

I don't know how you guys do it. I can barely get myself to watch one a day on most days, some days I don't even manage one. Over the years of this challenge, I only had one day a couple years back where I managed 5 movies in one day. That was grueling.

 

[TravisR]

I don't know how you guys do it. I can barely get myself to watch one a day on most days, some days I don't even manage one. Over the years of this challenge, I only had one day a couple years back where I managed 5 movies in one day. That was grueling.

It helps to be a couch potato with little to do.

And I don't want to know the highest number of movies that I watched in one day. I'd bet that I watched around 10 of the old Universal movies (they run about 60 or 70 minutes) in a day last year.

 

[John Stell]

Bold - Denotes first ever viewing
Rating - Out of a possible 4

084) 10/22/2018 The Bloody Judge (1970)

Christopher Lee plays true-life Lord Chancellor George Jeffreys who presides over cases of witchcraft and traitors against King James II in 17th century England. Not historically accurate of course, and since it’s Jess Franco behind the camera there is a misogynistic streak running throughout. Lee’s commanding performance keeps this watchable. But the film suffers when he’s not on screen.

085) 10/22/2018 Mark of the Devil (1970)

1/2
Herbert Lom is very good as an Austrian witchfinder par excellence (with a grand entrance a half hour in) in this nasty clone of The Conqueror Worm. There are gruesome torture scenes and some over-the-top villains to be sure. But the darn thing becomes more involving as it progresses and leads to an emotionally brutal climax.

086) 10/23/2018 Run Stranger Run (1973)

1/2
Although Darren “Kolchak” McGavin directed some episodic television, this is his only theatrical effort behind the camera. The fishing village Malone Bay has been plagued by several disappearances. Then an adoptee shows up in search of his birth parents, and gruesome murders begin. Unusual mix of drama and horror is still a well-acted, slow-burn thriller with a hell of a “discover the bodies” scene and a nail-biting finish. The secret of the birth father is no real surprise though. Simon “Vincenzo” Oakland plays the town sheriff.​

 

[Ruz-El]

I keep getting annoyed with rarely getting 5 in a day. UGH! Here's my four from yesterday.

070 10/22 What Have They Done To Your Daughters? (1974) 3.5/5 Sleazy Giallo in which a teenage girl is found hanging, only to be discovered that it was not a suicide. This one gets pretty dark, but it’s also a tight thriller.

071 10/22 Land Of The Dead (2005) 3.5/5 Watched the unrated version. While not as good as the original trilogy it's still a pretty good film. The big message of this one is a class war with baddie Dennis Hopper sleepwalking through his role as a the evil rich guy that won't let the workers live in his luxury apartment building. Some good action and effects mixed in with some crummy CGI, you can do a lot worse.

072 10/22 Nightmare Castle (1965) 3.5/5 Pretty good gothic horror about a miserable mad scientist type trying to gaslight his new bride so he can inherit the estate he hoped to receive when he killed her sister, his first wife! It’s well done, it just goes on a little longer than it should but mostly has enough going on to hold your interest.

073 10/22 Dawn Of the Dead (2004) 4/5 Watched the unrated cut for the first time in years and this one holds up just fine. This is how you do a remake, take the original and use it to explore other things instead of calling back constantly to the original. I’m fine with the fast moving twitcher zombies, the action sequences are great and it’s a shame we don’t get Sarah Polley in more movies since she’s so great at grounding this whole thing.

Rewatching LAND OF THE DEAD, I don't think I've ever seen the theatrical version. is it worth a watch? Enough different to be interesting or more of the same thing?

 

[Michael Elliott]

I don't know how you guys do it. I can barely get myself to watch one a day on most days, some days I don't even manage one. Over the years of this challenge, I only had one day a couple years back where I managed 5 movies in one day. That was grueling.

People in my "normal" life always ask me how I can watch so many but I honestly don't think it's anything too outrageous. I mean, one could play this game smart and only watch movies that clock in at 60-70 minutes. If one was to do that, the time it takes someone to watch a football game you could have three movies watched. I know people who spend Sunday's watching football from 11am-11:30pm so that's technically 12 movies that someone could watch.

Personally speaking, I have to keep up with the married/family life but I do cut out sleep here and there and squeeze in as much as I can. I think a lot of people get home from work, watch their local news, watch a hour of Family Feud, Wheel of Fortune, Jeopardy, then a couple hours of CBS programing before ending the night with the news or a talk show.

On my normal nights I spend the last 90-minutes watching SportsCenter but I don't do that in October.

 

[Michael Elliott]

The Phantom Honeymoon (1919) **

J. Searle Dawley (Edison's FRANKENSTEIN) directed this film about a man who goes around proving ghosts to be myths but while in Ireland on vacation he is told about a certain castle that might really be haunted. Everything in this film from the story to the performances to EVERYTHING is simply okay. There's really nothing here that makes this film stand apart from countless other "old dark house" films and sadly the visual style of the film looks like this was made in 1909 and not 1919! Film buffs will like seeing what was possibly Dawley's last film but outside of that there's really not too much here.

Crazy Knights (1944) **

Billy Gilbert and Shemp Howard star in this Monogram film that has them playing circus performers who get mixed up with some criminals and end up in a creepy old house with ghosts and a killer gorilla. This film tries so desperately hard for Gilbert and Shemp to be like Abbott and Costello but it fails because the screenplay doesn't use the two's stregnths and instead tried to get them to be something they aren't. This film wasn't horrible but at the same time there wasn't anything memorable or special about it.

The Strange Life of Dr. Frankenstein (2018) ***

This documentary celebrates the 200th Anniversary of the Mary Shelley novel and it was pretty entertaining. I thought a few of the speakers made me feel as if I was back in a very boring college course but outside of that there's some interesting bits of information about the author and what parts of her personal life might have played a role in her novel. You really have to wonder what Shelley would think about her novel still being read, filmed and talked about after all of these years.

 

[Ruz-El]

People in my "normal" life always ask me how I can watch so many but I honestly don't think it's anything too outrageous. I mean, one could play this game smart and only watch movies that clock in at 60-70 minutes. If one was to do that, the time it takes someone to watch a football game you could have three movies watched. I know people who spend Sunday's watching football from 11am-11:30pm so that's technically 12 movies that someone could watch.

Personally speaking, I have to keep up with the married/family life but I do cut out sleep here and there and squeeze in as much as I can. I think a lot of people get home from work, watch their local news, watch a hour of Family Feud, Wheel of Fortune, Jeopardy, then a couple hours of CBS programing before ending the night with the news or a talk show.

On my normal nights I spend the last 90-minutes watching SportsCenter but I don't do that in October.

Couldn't have said it better. I typically watch a movie or two in the evening, ignoring most other television programming. I've been putting most of my regular TV viewing (hate-watching wrestling which is around 6 stupid hours a week!) on hold this month in order to pack in more movies, and the movies I watched are all in my "too watch" pile as opposed to being chosen with running times in mind.

 

[Ruz-El]

Oh, I should add, November is my catch-up month where I watch all the special features I missed watching on the discs in October, as well as my TV shows. Once all caught up, I'm going to watch all the Studio Gibli films to cleanse my brain!

 

[Malcolm R]

The Lodgers C
We see you ever from below.

Rachel and Edward are twins, living alone in a derelict manor house in 1920's Ireland. Imprisoned by a generations-old family curse, they have not left the house since the suicides of their parents. They were told to obey three rules: 1) be locked into their bedrooms by the stroke of midnight; 2) do not permit a stranger to enter the house; 3) one sibling is never to leave the other.

Having attained young adulthood, Rachel feels the stirrings of romance with a young man recently returned from the war. But romance with a stranger does not fit within the rules of the house, and Rachel may be putting herself and brother Edward in grave danger.

A beautiful looking period piece reminiscent of The Others and The Woman in Black, this may appeal to those who like those sorts of slowly revealed ghost stories. I found it to be rather slow and plodding (and was never really a fan of The Others anyway). Also features David Bradley (Harry Potter, Game of Thrones) in a brief appearance as a creepy solicitor. Available on Netflix.

 

[whacky blacky]

46. Clownface (2017). FTV. Streamed. An awful flick involving killers with clown faces. 1.5/5.

 

[Neil Middlemiss]

October 23: Hold The Dark (2018) - 4 out of 5 - First Time Viewing

Following the deaths of three children from a small Alaskan town, reportedly taken by wolves, one of the mothers reaches out to Russell Core, a wolf expert, to track down and kill the wolf that killed her six year old son. Russell agrees, but soon realizes that all is not what it seems.

Hold the Dark is bleak, cold, and affecting despite feeling detached for long stretches. Jeffrey Wright's somber, whispering portrayal of Russell Core is sullen, and Wright is a magnificent actor that you hold on every word and stare. Directed by Jeremy Saulnier (Green Room), based on the book by William Giraldi, the film is an examination of man's base, animalistic nature. Weaving ideas, overlapping between wolf packs and the surprising, dark turn by a major character. The film takes us around several surprising corners, and leaves a good many things very subtly hinted at and never made obvious. The approach may frustrate some viewers, but I found it fascinating. It's dark, dour, and contains bursts of unexpected violence, but its a well shot, staged and performed examination of its core ideas and is quite something.

This is a more somber kind of horror (it's really more of a very dark thriller, but the story conceits I think firmly fit the horror trappings). Not for everyone (and it does have flaws and faults), but it certainly worked for me.