Scary Movie Month, Years Five and Six

For newcomers, please read this post for an explanation of Scary Movie Month, which also includes the movies from the first three years. Those interested can find the fourth year's post here.

I'd like to play a little Scary Movie Month catchup today, sharing the last two years of scary movies to get you revved up for this, the spooky seventh annual month of terror.


October 2011:

Godzilla
The original Godzilla turned out to be an unexpected pleasure. I'd never thought of the Godzilla franchise as anything but B movies, but it turns out that the original is as reputable of a franchise kick-off as the best of them. By modern standards it may favor story too much over terror, but it's a good story and a fascinating peek into the post-nuclear Japanese zeitgeist.

The Dead Zone
Christopher Walken stars in this psychological thriller about a school teacher with psychic powers that allow him to foresee the future of the people he touches. It's a solid movie, and the election theme that wraps it up makes it particularly seasonally-appropriate.

Creepshow
From the first few minutes it is clear that this movie is absolutely essential-- four scary Halloween stories told well. What more could you ask for? This is a perfect movie for October.

Fright Night
This is a solid 80's family horror movie. It's fun and charming and interesting. In a way, it's a send-up of classic Halloween season television programming just like Creepshow.

The Return to Oz
This is a remarkably dark Disney fable. It isn't going to give you nightmares quite the way Alice in Wonderland did, but it succeeds in feeling like the cracked, corrupted successor of The Wizard of Oz. The fact that this Dorothy is so much younger makes it more real. I found myself wondering at the fucked-up-ness of the very premise-- that a little girl keeps being transported to this alternate world to solve its problems. This doesn't strike the rich chords that the first movie did, but it's an imaginative, symbolically rich children's coming of age story that will go toe-to-toe with anything this side of Disney's golden age or Miazaki.

The Blair Witch Project
This was not an especially pleasant movie to watch, though that could be said of many excellent horror films. Unfortunately, this is also one of those movies whose influence dwarfed the movie itself. It's a good movie to be sure, but what made it revolutionary is no longer revolutionary and that takes something important away. Yet, it is a good movie and worth watching for the enormous influence it had on American film-- big and small screen both.

The Night of the Hunter
This is one of those movies that doesn't fit into any set of expectations, but which would blow any expectations I could have had. It was made in the 50's and is set during the Great Depression. The story is about a preacher who marries a woman with kids for her money, kills her and hunts the children. The themes of good and evil are black and white, but delivered with delicacy and thought.

Labyrinth
A classic coming-of-age fable, complete with puzzles, faith trials, new friends and being whisked back to real life at the end, this movie is of course enhanced by Jim Henson and David Bowie's presence. Honestly, the only thing I found genuinely exciting was all the goblins in the movie. Too few movies feature goblins.

Dracula
Like most dramatic movies of the era, the original Dracula has the feel of a play-- there is a sense of dramatic staging. The movie is excellent, and I can't find much to say about it that hasn't already been said, including that it suffers slightly when compared against the first two Frankensteins.

October 2012:

Gremlins
Gremlins is a perverse premise for a horror film perversely set amidst the backdrop of a classic down-and-out Christmas tale. They start out so cute! There's some goofy filler sequences with the gremlins trashing a bar, but this is undeniably a classic.

Army of Darkness
It may have been watching this with Sarah, who "gets" camp and B movie appeal, but this final installment was the most fun I had with the Evil Dead trilogy. Bruce Campbell is a pip as always, delivering some profoundly stupid lines with enough earnest enthusiasm to make you double take-- was that actually a cool thing to say? I think I should probably re-watch the first two of the trilogy, as I may appreciate what I didn't the first time in.

The Devil's Backbone
This Guillermo del Toro bears a strong resemblance to his Pan's Labyrinth. It's a ghost story, and an investigation of what a ghost is. Like Labyrinth, it's set during the Spanish Civil War and also strikes the theme of an adolescent-- this time a boy-- first encountering the harsh realities of the adult world. Unlike it, there is none of the fairy tale imagery or tones of familial love. This is a darker, more desolate movie. As with Pan's Labyrinth, it was a movie I more respected than enjoyed.

Hellboy
I chose this partly because Guillermo del Toro directed it, even though it wasn't a perfect fit for Scary Movie Month. The script was pretty terrible-- any "serious" dialogue or monologue was pure nonsense and there's no explanation why they're eventually able to kill the resurrecting hellhound. Ironically, this is the only movie that gave me a nightmare. Karl Ruprecht Kroenen was fantastically creepy in conception (a conception entirely of del Toro's by the way) and the ineffable Jeffrey Tambor's brief presence added a lot.

Something Wicked This Way Comes
This was based on a Ray Bradbury novel, and it bears certain similarities to the one Bradbury novel I've read through-- Dandelion Wine. It's a story set in a small town about strange things happening. It ends up being a reflection on life and on hope's dark side-- how it can eat people from the inside out and the only way to confront this danger is to come to terms with who we are. The movie is just as windswept and wonderful as the October imagery that pervades it.

Re-Animator
I guess I wasn't sure whether to expect more Frankenstein or Night of the Living Dead, but this movie is absolutely original. A med student has developed a "reagent" that can bring the dead back to life-- imperfectly. The only thing more disturbing than the evident agony of the newly-undead is the magnetic temptation to use the reagent. The movie is tempered by plenty of dry, pitch-perfect humor that leavens the mood but only intensifies the philosophical themes lurking beneath.

An American Werewolf in London
In a similar vein of fun, kind of bizarre 80's horror movies to Re-Animator, this one is more explicitly colorful and goofy. The black humor is great, the American-in-England angle is done tastefully and you genuinely care about the characters.

The Bird With the Crystal Plumage
This Dario Argento film is supposedly a quintessential Italian Giallo-- a mix of film noir-style detectives and stalking, bloody horror, with some European sexiness to top it off. The movie was all of those things and gorgeously, flawlessly executed.

Jaws
This classic has been in my scary movie month queue for a while now, and it more than lived up to the hype. The first half of the movie is thoughtful, subtly creative and genuinely scary. Without every coming across as "artsy" or "serious" there are reflections on responsibility, parenthood, and insider/outsider mentalities. The second half is more balls-to-the-walls terror, but the entire movie is remarkably well crafted and executed. I'm sure the shark they used looks ridiculous in person, but the movie's special effects were well-done. This is my pick of the month.

Scary Movie Month, Year Four

For those of you not familiar with Scary Movie Month, check the original post that I wrote last year. It explains everything. It recently occurred to me that the story of Scary Movie Month is a really good illustration of my approach to appreciation of things in general.

Now, for the movies I watched October 2010:

Bride of Frankenstein
This is one of those unusual sequels to better the original. It's more thoughtful, horrible, and has more heart than the original Frankenstein. The plot of the original was so familiar, it took something away from the movie's grandeur. I didn't know what to expect with Bride.

Ringu
It was scary, as expected. The only part of the movie that really stuck with me, though, was the fascinating relationship between the protagonist and her exhusband while they try to unravel the curse on their heads.

Carrie
My favorite scary movie of the month, this is a movie about a high school outcast. The symbolism is beautiful, thoughtful and exquisitely disturbing. The tension is built over the course of the movie until the famous breaking point, which (surprise) involves a lot of blood, in case you hadn't seen the movie's cover.

Martin
Martin is a real-life vampire. As he states emphatically, "there is no magic". He doesn't have any powers. All he needs is a syringe of tranquilizer, a razor blade and some planning. The themes worked here reminded me strongly of Carrie-- an expose of the alienated, painfully shy teen with destructive antisocial tendencies. The audience is invited to pity and identify with both main characters. However, whereas Carrie is a fundamentally good person driven to those actions by circumstance, Martin is a sociopath.

Night of the Living Dead
This is the movie that established the classic zombie. In the last decade, zombies have been getting faster and more fragile, but there's a lot to be said for a zombie that will take a shot to the heart, pause, and keep coming. Eating people adds something too, I think.

Dawn of the Dead
George Romero returned to the genre that he had popularized with Night of the Living Dead ten years later with this sequel. The bulk of the movie is set in a mall. A lot had happened since 1968, and though Romero didn't change the premise or lore, he certainly doesn't take himself as seriously this time (rather than sobering black and white, blood is now a garish orange-red). As with Living Dead, if the social commentary of the movie wasn't already painstakingly obvious, Romero hammers you with it at the credits. Movies like Shawn of the Dead or Zombieland demonstrate a considerable debt to this classic.

Suspiria
This Italian film seems to be the best-regarded horror movie about witchcraft. It's set in a ballet school in Germany and the main character is American (though she almost only speaks Italian). The movie plays as a sort of boarding school mystery. There's a strong sense of apprehension and "weirdness" through the movie. I wasn't a big fan, but the movie is obviously well-made.

Poltergeist
Poltergeist comes off as kind of the flagship for the family-fun horror genre. The amount of special effects is competitive with contemporary popcorn movies, which is saying something. It takes you on a fun, fright-filled ride, accomplishing exactly what it set out to do.

Let the Right One In
This Swedish film is about a twelve-year-old boy befriending a vampire girl. The movie's as much an old-school romance as a horror film. I thought it was great.

The Descent
This keeps getting reviewed as the best horror movie of the 00's or in the words of a friend, "a horror movie that doesn't suck". As you would expect from one about spelunking, it is incredibly dark and claustrophobic. That pretty much sums things up.

Scary Movie Month

October has a lot going for it. Among those things is my third annual tradition of Scary Movie Month. Like many of you out there, I never really liked horror films. I didn't really get why people watched them. So, I decided that just like I'd done with so many kinds of music, I'd teach myself to like scary movies. I looked up the most critically acclaimed films, downloaded them, and approached each with an open mind.

That was October of 2007, and by the end of the month I'd hated some and been quite impressed by others. I didn't yet love horror movies, but the next year I was compelled to continue what I had begun and was left a bit more intrigued than the year before, which brings us to the third annual Scary Movie Month.

I think I'm starting to genuinely enjoy horror and the thrill that it endeavors to produce. I still don't anticipate becoming a fan of the Saw saga, Hostel or the recent House of Wax (bits of each I've seen). The gore-as-terror equation never really made much sense to me. Gore is an enhancer of terror rather than it's generator. It's the fear of harm that drives the scariest movies rather than the actual harm. Don't think I don't relish the satisfying crunch of bones, squelch of flesh or spurt of blood as much as the next moviegoer. I do. It's just supposed to be the ominous warning to the hero/heroine that if they don't run like crazy they'll be next, and it's this epiphany and the ensuing flight that make for the white knuckled ride we look for in modern horror.

Keep in mind that Scary Movie Month is intended as a fulfillment of October rather than a straight out scream-fest. I included movies that have little to do with Halloween and little to do with horror. Even the definition of horror has changed (from King Kong to said gore-fests), and I've endeavored to keep my operating definition as broad as possible.

These are the movies that I've watched these past few years.

October 2007:

Shaun of the Dead

Zombies are my favorite horror movie monster. They don't feel pain, they increase logarithmically and they fucking eat brains. Brains, man, brains. Also all that crap about social commentary is pretty cool. Shaun of the Dead was an obvious choice for its preeminence within that genre and its relative modernity. It's hilarious, sincerely scary and all that, but I'm not sure it lived up to the considerable hype. It's a classic, no doubt, but it probably won't ever make my facebook list.

28 Days Later

An obvious followup to watching Shaun of the Dead because its also about zombies, also British, also from the mid 00's and also critically acclaimed. This movie rocked my socks. It has a good blend of humor, commentary, terror and emotional heft. If there's one movie that I recommend you watch from this post, this is it.

Donnie Darko

While gripping and occasionally scary, this is no horror movie. This is a psychological thriller. What struck me most about Donnie Darko was its serenity and its perfect absorption of that magic month, October.

Ginger Snaps

A Canadian indie film made in 2000. This is a well-rounded horror film that builds from a comparison between werewolfism and girls at puberty. Don't mind the 80's effects, this is a solid movie.

The Lost Boys

This vampire film draws the comparison between vampirism and teen angst. It's a fun 80's movie that you have to watch if you have any interest in Santa Cruz, where it was filmed.

Freaks

This is a 1930's cult classic. It was made before regulations prevented filmmakers from exploiting people's deformities for gain, or whatever, so it's on one level a literal freak show. Overlook the bad acting and you'll find a horror movie with heart.

October 2008:

Hocus Pocus
This has to be in contention for the ultimate Halloween movie. It manages the tricky feat of being simultaneously light, creepy and thrilling. All hail Bette Midler and Disney. How could a movie this good not earn accolades?

Evil Dead
Obviously I had to watch this with my interest in zombies and cult films. Bruce Campbell is a pip, but I'm not sure I was prepared to appreciate the movie's outlandish sense of scare and style.

Nosferatu
I suppose this is the first silent movie I've watched. This is the original vampire movie and it gets a lot of kudos for pioneering the genre. I found it amazing how much of the movie's montages and imagery had been appropriated to Mel Brook's Young Frankenstein, since spoofs are bellwethers for influence. The movie is good, if a little slow. Unlike Dracula (which was based off the same book), vampires are compared to plague-bearing rodents rather than suave seducers.

Frankenstein
This classic turned out to be everything I'd hoped. It's both scary and heart wrenching in that old horror way.

Near Dark
Rotten Tomatoes gave this rave reviews for its straddling of genres (vampire/western/family), but I didn't see what made it a classic. It's a solid movie, just not spectacular.

Halloween
Apparently the original Halloween was an indie movie and it started the slasher style that defined horror for the next two decades. This movie is all about building suspense rather than violent gore and it does it very well. Brandon thought it was too slow. I think that's mostly a quibble with the genre rather than the execution, though.

October 2009:

Alien
Matt Wingert was trying to tell me about Alien and Aliens and how they differed. Mid-explanation, he just gave up and said, "You need to watch both of them." So that's exactly what I did when Scary Movie Month rolled in. I watched one after another. Alien is a suspenseful slasher with a similar cadence to Halloween.

Aliens
Where Alien was suspenseful, Aliens is riproaringly intense. The movie is a repeated pattern of action, terror, suspense, that spirals higher and higher. What can I say? I found it intensely gratifying. At the beginning I noted feeling genuinely scared and that fear kept snowballing into the kind of claustrophobic horror that is as traumatizing as it is satisfying.

Slither
This movie is lauded for it's worthy tribute to various classic horror movie styles. Nathan Fillion (from Firefly) stars in this genre romp. By the end of the movie, I was thoroughly disgusted and scared. In a good way, of course, but this isn't for the faint of heart.

Rosemary's Baby
After watching this I must have noticed like five cultural references to the movie. This is Roman Polanski's classic about a woman who believes she's been impregnated with the spawn of Satan. There's no terror, really, just a lot of unsettling horror.

Young Frankenstein
In Mel Brooks's low-brow fashion, this is a parody of Frankenstein and indeed all things horror. I told Jill that after watching this she hardly needed to see the original.

Nightmare Before Christmas
Season-appropriate and by Tim Burton, this was a must-see. Obviously I'd watched it before, but this was the first time I recognized this movie for its full greatness. This isn't just a great Halloween movie, it's a great Christmas movie, a great animated movie and a great musical.

Satan's Little Helper
This independent film is about a boy obsessed with a video game called "Satan's Little Helper". He dresses up as Satan's Little Helper for Halloween and goes out "to find Satan". He finds a serial killer in a Satan costume, befriends him, and takes him home. What ensues can be left to your imagination, but I assure you it's worth your while. Surely this is a testament to power of the Halloween mask.

Ten Favorite Movies

These are my favorite movies, not the movies I deem to be "the greatest". That considered, the distinction is fairly trivial. They are ordered from top to bottom, first to tenth. On this list two are cliches of any favorite movie list, three more are undisputed classics and five were made since the millennium. Time will tell which of those will achieve immortality and to what degree the classics will endure, but before that happens, I will tell you why these movies are patently awesome.


There Will Be Blood- At the risk of jumping the gun, seeing how this movie came out less than a year ago, I think that this is the single greatest movie of the decade. Chugging, dark and horrifyingly vivid, this movie is a study of a man driven, like Citizen Kane before it.The film follows Daniel Plainview's ruthless rise to wealth as an oil baron in the California oil fields. It is clear that he will stop at nothing to fulfill his ambition and yet, the most terrifying moments of the movie are the glimmers of humanity, hastily concealed, that his character betrays. That we all have a little Daniel Plainview in us becomes simultaneously disturbing and perversely satisfying.

Star Wars IV, V, VI- You may quip about elements of the acting or script, but these three movies are ultimately unassailable for their wild imagination, excellent sequences, pacing, story, characters and... Harrison Ford.

Donnie Darko- If you cease trying to make sense of the logical paradoxes that structure the movie's plot, this movie is even better than the generally excellent reviews it received might suggest. Donnie Darko is a highschooler with psychological issues who is saved from a falling airplane engine by a talking bunny named Frank. The movie continues through October until the day Frank has told Donnie the world will end. The social commentary is spot on, the mood is pitch-perfect and the mind-fuck coefficient is outrageous, but more than anything this is a movie that excels at capturing moments subtle and vastly profound. Even without the backbone of a cohesive thesis, this stands comfortably between cinema classics.

Monty Python and the Search for the Holy Grail- Occasionally I see glimpses of insight in the collection of skits that compose King Arthur's absurd travels, but mostly what I see is pure, brilliant humor that doesn't need meaning to keep me laughing like a maniac the whole way through.

Superbad- I love high school movies and I love Rogen/Apatow, so it should be no surprise that Superbad ranks highly here. While Superbad is savagely funny and intensely profane, it is no American Pie. Its jokes carry the sting of truth and the movie packs the emotional weight that characterizes the best of high school movies. The only other that competes on these terms is Ferris Buehler.

The Seventh Seal- I first heard of this reading Ingmar Bergman's obituary last summer. It follows a knight returning from the crusades to his home in Sweden amidst the height of the Black Plague. Along the way home he plays chess against Death for his life. Like Hamlet before it, it's a meditation on mortality. It also shares with Hamlet its surreal horror and leavening humor. If you want a trippier Bergman that's on the same echelon, watch Wild Strawberries, but if you want your movie fun as well as deep, go no further.

The Bourne Identity- This is the finest action movie I have ever seen. Driven by a magnetic plot and shot with hand-held cameras, this movie is pure visceral thrill. I particularly love the scene where Bourne hunts down the sniper outside the British expat's house.

Pulp Fiction- This is Quentin Tarantino in all of his fucked up glory. It's fun. It's sick. It's a great ride. I don't know that Dick Dale or gratuitous violence were ever so cool as in this film.

The Searchers- This is a John Ford western starring John Wayne. It's a brilliant drama piece set against the wide open west, swept along by the epic travels made in search of John Wayne's abducted niece.

28 Days Later- This is an incredible apocalyptic zombie movie. For those of you apprehensive of either designation, I assure you that it has crossover appeal. You'll laugh, cry, scream and ponder deep philosophical questions. I don't know what it is with British zombie flicks this decade, but they're on fire over there.