Horror-tober 6: Black Night (Hak yae)

An international horror anthology with stories from three different countries. First was Next Door, a ghost story from China. A young girl returns to her former lover during the "ghost festival". The couple are haunted by something and discover that their neighbor, which the girl's lover was dating, drowned in her tub. A decent ghost story with some good hair-raising moments and jump scares.

After that tale came, Dark Hole, a monster/psychological thriller from Japan. Yuki has been suffering from nightmares which seem to be the ghosts of her past. She begins seeing a psychiatrist and tells the story of her "pet", some unknown creature, that she describes was responsible for some horrific accidents and deaths when she was a child. Her psychiatrist believes she has created this "pet" as a way to lock up the truth that she is a murderer. Will her fiance believe her or the psychiatrist? This one was a fun guessing game. Is she really a killer or not? Will she kill again since the psychiatrist has unlocked her secrets? Will her fiance confront her? Is the creature real? Definitely a bit of a roller coaster of a tale but slow build with a so-so plot.

Lastly was The Lost Memory, a ghost story from Thailand. A single mother is being followed by a shadowy figure.She appears to have amnesia or something and continues to get phone calls from a friend, telling her to remember the accident, to not blame herself, and asks for forgiveness. She begins to remember her friendship with this person and her supposedly ex-husband. But the memories become clearer and she is reminded that her son died in a car accident. She is haunted by her suppressed memories of the accident and the events leading up to it, but her ghostly son is not just a haunting memory. He wants to be with his mommy. I felt this one was a bit confusing early on but once it clicked what was happening, nobody acknowledged her son, the rest of it was predictable and forgettable.

All in all I liked the first story but the other two were not very interesting and pretty forgettable.

My rating:

Horror-tober 18: The Psychic

A woman has visions of a room and a woman being entombed in a wall. Compelled by the visions she breaks down the wall in her husband's abandoned estate. When she discovers a skeleton in the wall, her husband is accused of murdering a young model. But she does not believe he did it nor that the woman found in the wall is indeed that young model (her visions were of an older woman). So she works with her psychiatrist to find the real culprit, but when she gets too close to the truth will it be the end of her search and her life?

Discovering the skeleton in the wall.

After I last posted about We Are Still Here and blasphemously replied to a comment from a friend saying that I do not like Fulci's Zombi 2, he recommended this earlier Fulci film. And because it was easy to find through the Multnomah County Library's digital service Hoopla, I was able to watch it for this year.

I actually quite enjoyed this film. It was suspenseful and the plot was interesting. I particularly liked the close-up shots of Jennifer O'Neill's eyes when she was having her visions. She has some very beautiful green eyes.

Those eyes! Although not the best screen capture of them

The soundtrack was also really enjoyable and the cinematography was quite striking with some really interesting shots and lighting.

One of my favorite shots in the film.

My friend was right, this was definitely a good one and unlike Fulci's later horror movies with little gore and a particularly good mystery and terrific soundtrack.

Horror-tober 15: Special Quadruple Feature

Special Poster made for the event by artist Tristan Jones @tyrannojones

This day was a special quadruple horror feature event. Hollywood Theatre is a local, historic non-profit theater with a lot of interesting events and special showings. The group that does a Grindhouse Film Festival at the theater put this event on this year. Four movies - a Satanic film, an underrated horror sequel, a forgotten 80's slasher, and a batshit-crazy Italian gutmuncher - all rare, 35mm reels. I knew this wasn't for Joey, so I went on my own. But two friends were there and I had some company to sit through these four movies with. On to the ratings!

Satanic Film 

Race with the Devil

Motorcycle racer and dealer, Roger (Peter Fonda) heads out in an RV for a vacation with his wife, Kelly and longtime friends Frank (Warren Oates) and Alice (Loretta Swit of M*A*S*H fame). All seems well until they witness some satanic ritual while camping in a remote spot in Texas on the way to Colorado. Hell breaks lose after they report what they saw to the local law enforcement and they find themselves pursued by the relentless satanists to the very end.

I liked this one alright, it was very action-packed and pretty suspenseful. It was also fun to see Peter Fonda in something unlike I have ever seen him in before. The emcee of the event, for lack of a better word, mentioned that Warren Oates is an underrated actor of the time, and then made a comment about his reaction in the film when he believes he is witnessing an orgy. He was right, it was a pretty fantastic reaction. My main complaint, as is true with a lot of these earlier movies, is the blatant animal abuse. There is a scene where the satanists snuck into the RV and left two live rattlesnakes. Ten intense, grueling, and painfully awful minutes later the two snakes are killed and thrown out of the RV. Not clear if the snakes were actually killed but they seemed to be beat with various items in this scene and it is pretty difficult to watch (mostly because of the constant shrieking from the two female leads). Otherwise the movie was goofy and pretty entertaining throughout.    

Underrated Horror Sequel 

Psycho II

Norman Bates has spent the last 22 years in a mental institution and is released to return home. The victims' families are not happy and incessantly tell the police he needs to be put away forever, not free to kill again. When people start disappearing around the house, everyone questions if Norman is truly "cured" or if being home has made his mind snap back to his "old ways".  

Anthony Perkins revives his role as iconic Norman Bates in this sequel and he does it really well. You almost feel for the guy and don't want him to go crazy and start killing people again. But as he appears to slip further into madness because of the circumstances at the house, you can see that crazy look return. 

It was funny, weird, and pretty darn good overall. It had the best death scene of the night, when a man is stab on a staircase and falls backwards over the railing and with the knife still in him, he lands on the second railing below right on the knife hilt. Gruesome, ridiculous, but well done. This one also has some other recognizable faces, including Dennis Franz, Meg Tilly, Robert Loggia, and Vera Miles (in her same role from Psycho). This might have been my favorite of the night, so it gets the highest rating.

Forgotten 80's Slasher

The Funhouse

The fair is in town and Amy's little brother wants to go! But he is stuck at home while she goes with her boyfriend and another couple. They decide, wouldn't it be fun to stay in the funhouse over night? Yeah, I suppose it would be, but they soon find out the fair hides some dark secrets and they will have to pay a price for discovering those secrets, trapped in the funhouse.

From the director of Texas Chanisaw Massacre (Tobe Hooper), The Funhouse is a fun romp in the "hillbilly", freakshow slasher way. This is one I had actually seen before (the only of all four, which is pretty good!) but back in my early twenties so it was nice to see it again after so long. Also of note, the 35mm of this film was borrowed from Quentin Tarantino's private collection. This movie is genuinely creepy with fantastic cinematography. It is a slow build with a pretty good score. Yes, there is some poor acting and it is goofy but it ends so perfectly. A gem in my eyes and definitely worth a watch.

Batshit-crazy Italian Gutmuncher

Burial Ground

A scientist of some sort is in a crypt when the dead come to life. A group of people come to visit said scientist at his estate and the dead escape from the crypt, coming to eat the living!

So many words for this one. First, I was very happy that this was the last one shown for the night. One because it was entertaining enough to keep me awake until the end and two because it was SUCH a bizarre movie that if I was in my right mind, I may not have enjoyed it at all. As far as calling it a batshit-crazy Italian gutmuncher, all correct and completely accurate. Second, there is an underlying plot, but the movie is just so relentless with the undead and gore that all character development just flies right out the window. Whoosh! Really all I can say for the story is, "It smells of death." Third, the "child" played by a small adult man. That's right. I'm actually not even sure how old he is supposed to be, 6? 8? 11? Who knows. But it is creepy, weird, hilarious, and sort of makes a lot of sense as to why it was not an actual child in the movie (SPOILERS and links for the brave!).

Finally, the gore. It seems like a running theme in the 80's Italian genre to be gross-out gory, and this film fits that mold. The makeup effects have real worms and maggots crawling around the eye socket of the undead for close-up shots. The guts that the undead tear into when they make a fresh kill are all totally real (from some animal obviously). And buckets of blood.    

I only give this one a three because I was in such a weird state of mind and am also rating it in comparison to the others (not as good as Psycho or Funhouse but better than Devil). If I watched it today, it would not be rated as high. I give the movie a rating after I see it even if I feel a bit delirious at the time and it takes me a week to write the blog.  

After about 6-7 hours the last film ended and I headed home at a little after 5am. I think the best part of the whole event was being with an audience to laugh, cheer, and otherwise engage with during the showings. Also the ridiculous trailers matching the theme of the movie were spectacular (Satanic films, horror sequels, slashers all with "Don't" in the title, and seriously WTF kind of trailer did I just see, is that really a movie?). Actually I wish I had remembered what the Asian horror one was called that was shown before Burial, I think it looked even more batshit-crazy than that film. 100% would do this again next year if they do it, I suspect they will. Big thanks to Leif for making me aware of this event and sticking in to the end with me!

Horror-tober 11: Witching and Bitching (Las Brujas de Zugarramurdi)

This one has been on my list to watch for some time, so I'm glad that I finally got a chance to work it in for Horror-tober Fest.

A man, robs a "cash for gold" shop with some other down on their luck men, basically so he can escape with his son and no longer provide alimony. Running from the police with one of his accomplices, his son, a hijacked cab driver, and a man that was on his way to a job interview, this rag tag crew finds themselves on the way to France. But they have to pass through Zugarramurdi, a place known for dark magics and witches.

This Spanish movie is zany and over-the-top all the way through from the very begininng. With elements of comedy, romance, and good old gross out horror, this one was quite enjoyable. Also a farce on misogyny and feminism in a way. It is insane, the effects are weird and kooky, and it often does not make sense, but that is what makes this one a joy to sit through. Because I am running behind on my reviews, I am making this one and others brief.  

Horror-tober 4: Onibaba

Onibaba comes from Japan and literally translates to "demon hag". A drama/horror about civil unrest and war in feudal Japan and how it shapes the lives of those affected. An old woman and her daughter-in-law kill soldiers to sell their gear for food and other supplies for survival. They dispose of the bodies in a mysterious hole in the field of tall grass in which they live in a hut. A friend of the old woman's son returns and informs the two women that her son is dead. Seduction, jealousy, and dark schemes develop as the film progresses. When left alone the old woman encounters a samurai wearing a demon mask and everything in the world of these three people is changed.

A friend recommended this to me on Halloween last year, and it was definitely worth a watch and made up for watching Scouts the day before. From the beautiful setting and superb cinematography to the haunting and odd musical score, Onibaba provides a lot to excite filmmakers and film lovers alike.

A little less of a horror but terrifying all the same, this film was a delight in so many ways. Nobuko Otowa's performance as the old woman was a joy to watch. She not only had a sinister look because of the awesome makeup (those eyebrows!) but because of her perfectly timed facial expressions. The downward stare depicted in the poster, the slight smirk as she lures a soldier to his death. Pure perfection. Kei Sato as Hachi, was also perfectly cast. The story was compelling and although seems slow to build at times, was actually very well done for development of the three main characters and to add tension between them. All in all a great little piece of film and I think I will surely add Kaneto Shindo, the director's film Kuroneko to next year's fest.

Joey and I agree on a rating for this one as well:

Horror-tober 13: Archivo 253

Another one I chose because it was pretty short. As you can tell by my tardiness with posts, I don't have a lot of time to write these things up as you can tell since I keep posting these days after I have watched them.

Archivo 253 tells the story of four paranomal investigators breaking into an old insane asylum to discover why it was closed without an explanation years before. This film falls into the "found-footage" genre. These "investigators" find that there is some spirit or spirits in the building, but they haven't found the good solid evidence they crave for. So of course when they are getting a pretty good response, one of them sort of pesters it by asking if it is an evil spirit and asks it to show itself. Don't they know the old saying, "be careful what you wish for?" In their case, it awakens whatever evil spirit or demon is haunting the institution and it has no problem messing with them. 

The jump scares in this one really did make me jump a few times which I give it credit for, but I guess that is what I get for watching a movie on my laptop with headphones. It also had a pretty slow build which I enjoyed, too often movies like this jump right in and it just doesn't work well. Aside from that, I just wasn't super drawn into the story. I actually caught myself paying more attention to Joey playing the video game, The Last of Us, than the movie. But again, to its credit, it scared me at parts, some moments were pretty tense, and it had a nice build to when the shit really goes down. That and something really creepy with human hair that is just unnerving.   

Horror-tober 6: Tormented (Rabbito Hora)

I chose this one this evening because I wanted to watch something fairly short and Joey expressed interest in it and it is always fun to get him to watch horror movies, because I know how much he loves them.

After Kiriko's brother, Daigo, puts a dying rabbit out of its misery and with his tenth birthday approaching, he starts having weird dreams and visions of a giant stuffed rabbit that seem all too real. On top of that, Kiriko's father doesn't seem concerned for either of them. But he is also still distraught over losing Daigo's mother in childbirth, so you can't really be too hard on the guy.

I'm not going to lie, I was intrigued by this one because I wanted to see creepy giant stuffed animals do creepy things. It had that, but the overall story was kind of all over the place, and even though there is a psychological twist, it just didn't really help to explain the finer details of the story. Also pretty predictable. Without spoiling too much, I will say that it did have some good creepy moments. When the cutesy giant stuffed rabbit turns into a more realistic and menacing rabbit and at the end the smaller stuffed rabbit loses its head but then its body crawls off the screen; both of which were a bit unnerving.

Hey, there. Wanna play? Both of these scenes have nice yellow tones too

I just noticed the more realistic giant stuffed rabbit has nipples, that explains some things

The whole time during the movie, Kiriko's father is making pop-up books of The Little Mermaid, not the sweet Disney version, and when shown on screen they are really quite beautiful. It also ties into Kiriko's narrative. She is mute. She lost her voice at some point as a child and it is implied that it was caused by a traumatic event in the past which then affects her situation in the film. Again, don't want to spoil anything for anyone wanting to watch this so won't give away too many details.

The little mermaid creeps into the Prince's room to kill him and get her voice back

In the end she could not do it and dissolves away as sea foam in the ocean

Definitely had some nice visuals and cinematography, but all in all, a little drab and not enough of the creepy giant stuffed animals. Joey gives it 2 skulls and I give it 2.5 skulls, purely for the pop-up books (reminded me of The Babadook, although not creepy like that one).  

Joey's rating:

My rating:

Pulse

It has been a long time for me to bring myself to watch this one, but is the first fort this year's Transcontinental Tuesdays.

Since I have recently been to Japan I wanted to kick-off this year's foreign films with a Japanese horror I have put off watching for some time. I also wanted to share this one since it was my first experience using hoopla. Hoopla is a free media streaming site through participating public libraries. You can find movies, music and audiobooks to watch and listen to for free with your library membership. They have a lot available that I have not been able to find elsewhere and you are allowed to stream eight items each month. Movies and television episodes can be borrowed for 72 hours, music for 7 days and audiobooks for 21 days. Of course, they also support apps for apple, android and the Kindle Fire so you can have access to your rentals wherever you are. It's a pretty nice program and although it doesn't have as much as Netlfix streaming or its kin, I am sure you'd be able to find something you'd enjoy. Alright, my plug for hoopla is done so back to the review.

For this, you are way cool in my book hoopla

Known as "Kairo" in Japan Pulse is directed by Kiyoshi Kurosawa and based on his novel of the same title. Sometimes the subtitles blend with the film making them unreadable, which is somewhat annoying. After a group of friends lose a friend to suicide, they discover a disc he had with pictures of him and a ghostly face in his computer monitor. Shortly after, they begin seeing strange things around Japan, there are doors marked with red tape and people are killing themselves after witnessing something terrible. The parallel story-line in the film is of a young man that attempts to connect to the internet, only to be brought to a strange site where people are observed behaving strangely. When he turns the computer off, it turns back on in the middle of the night on a video of a man with a bag over his head and writing on the wall behind him. He goes to the university to ask computer science students about it and makes a friend that tells him ghosts are invading the human world through computers and the internet. Although it is a suspenseful, creepy and entirely unnerving ghost story, it is also a commentary on communication and the alienation and loneliness we experience which is created by modern technology. This gives it a lot more substance than your typical gore fest horror movie, which is nice to have every now and then. Especially for me when I am watching these kinds of movies every day!

Ghost in the machine

My rating:

The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari

I chose this one purely because it was short, and I had a time constraint that evening. But it still fits for Transcontinental Tuesday.

Das Cabinet des Dr. Caligari can be said to be the first true horror film. Made before the original Nosferatu, it is also a German silent film. I appreciate silent films, but I often do not like them very much. I did like this one though. I enjoyed the scenery, the set was very well made and gave the whole film a strange mood, which was perfect. The lines and shapes the set created reminded me a lot of Burton, maybe he was inspired by it? The overall story was interesting and the characters looked pretty neat. Especially the Somnambulist, Cesare. The lighting of the film was all good, and designed in a way to set the time of the story - an orangish filter for day and blue for night. Shadow play was also really nice in it.

I enjoyed watching it, especially since it is a little piece of film history, but I wouldn't say that I loved it. Good but not great in my opinion. However, it is worth the 71 minutes or so to give it a watch. Maybe it is because it is getting closer to Halloween, and Joey is getting into the spirit, but this is the fourth film he has watched with me - unusual for him it is since he is not a big horror or Halloween fan.

My rating:

Joey's rating: