October 2009, 31 Days of Horror Round 2

[Mr-K]

HIIIIIIIIIIIIIIISSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS

[Dunlap]

I'm trying to watch a bunch of classics and some really old stuff this year.

Anyway, last night I watched Carnival of Souls. It's an old black and white about a girl who was in a car crash who moves to Utah to get away from it all. However, she constantly sees a strange man everywhere. It was way low budget, and that manifests in some pretty wooden acting, but the main character was perfectly cast. She has a very peculiar look that in one shot can be beautiful and the next grotesque. The organ soundtrack is wonderful, and there are a lot of neat camera shots and some pretty creepy scenes that reminded me of the Jacob's Ladder effect. Sometimes the execution can be silly, but there are plenty of times where they hit it just right.

And it's on Netflix Instant Play.

[SamuraiMoogle]

Watched Trick R Treast last night. It was ok. Sack boy is all kinds of awesome in this though.

[Mr-K]

House of Wax! A lot of fun even with all of the blatant 3D pandering.

[Hubbitron]

Pieces
Audition (Still the scariest movie I have ever seen)
Bloody Birthday
The Ice Cream Man
Mr. Ice Cream Man
Uzumaki
Ghoulies 3 (Kevin McCarthy)
Garbage Pail Kids (Not a Horror but extremely frightening)
Slumber Party Massacre 2 (Hair Metal guitar guy)

[D_N_G]

LOL MrK, watched a wax movie last night too, Waxwork.
Gonna try and Watch Waxwork 2 today

Ghoulies 3 (Kevin McCarthy)

I wish this was on DVD

[Mr-K]

I'm trying to see either Zombieland or Paranormal Activity tonight, but I'm not sure if it's going to pan out. I'm, uh, "getting" [Rec] 2 and Trick R Treat as a backup

Shit, Rec 2 is a cam with no subtitles, oh well.

[Mr-K]

Does Delicatessen count for this? I know it's a comedy, but it's also about eating people.

[JM]

nope, not horrific enough. Fucking fantastic movie, but not horror.

[Mr-K]

Dead End. Not very good. But allow me to regale you with a related anecdote.

I went to college out in the mountains, and in order to get out there I had to drive through some pretty dull stretches of interstate. At night, it was too dark to tell how far you've gone or how much longer you have left to go. It's just a road, trees to the left, trees to the right. Not many people around.

As I drove down these roads I often got the feeling like I had been stuck on some infinite loop, which I thought might make for a kind of neat episode of the twlight zone. How the driver would slowly realize that he wasn't really getting anywhere, a mysterious car that comes the other way every so often--but it's too dark to see inside, maybe passing a landmark over and over, a sign or cabin or something. At one point, they'd get out of the car and try to walk, and eventually, if they cut through the woods or go down the road, they come across their car again as if they circled a small planet. These are corny ideas, but this is what I thought about at 11 o'clock going between Richmond and Charlottesville.

Now that I've seen Dead End, I can safely say that it makes a pretty shitty movie. In fact, Dead End has every single thing that popped into my head. The endless road, the cabin, the walking through the woods and looping around to the other side of the road. All of it.

I don't really think it was the thought of the premise that makes Dead End so intolerable. Ray Wise is in it, and he's great to watch, but the rest of the cast is repugnant and horrible. The dialogue is terrible, the resolution is silly and obvious. Just. Bad.

The helicopter shots of the single line of road through apparently endless forest are pretty neat though.