Post-October Horror Wrap-Up

After being a bit overwhelmed during October (real life can be a bitch sometimes), there were a few things I missed finishing up during the month, so here's my final wrap-up for October's horror on Netflix!  I'm reviewing 4 things tonight, Daredevil (which snuck in a third season in October), The Haunting of Hill House (which I finally finished), Sabrina and Castlevania!

Daredevil (season 3) is something I watch for the fighting, I'll be perfectly honest with you.  Matt Murdock is basically just a punch-drunk boxer looking for a brawl at every turn, and slips into the mask just so people don't cut him any slack because he's blind.  All the rest is just fluff!  Yep, I said it.  Daredevil is just an excuse for an angry Matt Murdock to punch someone because he's blind.

Season 3 brings back Kingpin as a foil for Daredevil's own return to life after the events of The Defenders' first season.  I read an article recently about how Kingpin is the best villain in the Marvel universe, and I'm just not seeing it.  Granted, Vincent D'Onofrio did an awesome job, but it just didn't seem to ring true.  I don't know, maybe it was the fakeness of the relationship or the way Kingpin seemed to just know absolutely everything at all times, but this season just didn't seem to do it for me.  I mean, last season of Daredevil, there was that awesome biker-battle down the stairwell of a hotel, and fuck that was awesome, I don't think I'll ever forget it.  But this season?  I think I've already forgotten it.  No really cool fights.  Sure plenty of fights, but no REALLY COOL ones.  Bullseye (minor spoiler) was basically just a Daredevil clone, as he even seemed to have almost the same powers.  I get that they can't send Daredevil up against the Hulk or something, but seriously, wouldn't THAT be an awesome battle?  Oh, well.  Season 3 just wasn't as good as season 2.  Still, it's on netflix if you want to catch up.  It didn't suck horribly, so maybe season 4 will be better.

I finished watching Castlevania (season 2) next, so I'm reviewing it next.  Castlevania only started with 4 episodes, and there were like, 8 or ten the second season.  Interestingly enough, they introduced Dracula as a foil, and seem to have (cough, spoiler alert) done away with him already.  I'm... not sure what's going to happen in season 3, as I've never played Castlevania.  Still, if there is a season 3 (season 2 was an adequate series finale), I'm interested in the further adventures of Belmont, the Speaker spellcaster lady (can't recall her name now, but she's cute and sassy, which is always a good combo), and Alucard (Dracula's son, as though that needed explaining).  Anyways, seasons 1 and 2 were good watching for a cartoon, so watch them on netflix if you like that sort of thing.

Chilling Adventures of Sabrina (season 1) started out with SO much promise.  There's a countdown of days to Sabrina's Dark Baptism, on Halloween of all things, her 16th birthday, AND a blood moon!  The first two or three episodes ROCKED.  Sixteen-year-old Sabrina (played by Kiernan Shipka, who actually turns 19 on Nov 10) is half-naked part of the time, she's having disturbing visions, there's a lot of drama and fear and suspense, then betrayal and then Satan just shows up to keep things spicy! And then it all goes downhill from there.  Yep.  Total tumble into oblivious obscurity.  The countdown vanishes, it's all bouncing here and there in the plot, the villain vanishes from sight, and the ending fucking sucked.  Totally goes against character, and if it was going to go that way in the first place, why fucking tease it out over ten episodes?  Stupid.  Everyone else in the story says true to character except Sabrina, and that's just ridiculous.  Bah!  I doubt I'd watch a season 2 now, considering that Sabrina basically became everything she hated.  Why bother watching that?

And finally the Haunting of Hill House (season 1).  There were SO many flashbacks, I can't even begin to explain just how many there were.  Bouncing back and forth and back and forth was incredibly annoying.  I wish they had just shown the past, then finished the present part, because I'm not sure I'd be up for a future season.  Honestly, I'm not even sure how there could be, at this point.  Spoiler alert, half the cast died, and Carla Gugino was just awesome, so what could they possibly follow up with?

Maybe Castlevania and Sabrina and Hill House are all just one-offs, not really seasons that will be continued so much, as ten-hour movies.  If so, Hill House could have used a LOT of trimming.  They basically told the same story from like 8 different viewpoints, over the course of ten episodes.  So really, there was like two hours of story dragged out to ten hours of viewing time.  Sure, there were some jump-scares and creepy dead things and the normal crap you get from these things these days, but nothing exceptionally new or different.  The middle portions of the story seemed to drag something fierce, and the ending got downright into unsurprising and expected territory.  Still, as I said, Carla Gugino was pretty awesome, and did such a great job as the mom, it was worth sticking it out to find out everything that happened.

In other news, I managed to catch the Frighteners the other night (I DVR'd it, haven't watched it yet), so I won't be missing that this season, and I can always catch the Fog somewhere, I am sure.  Just a few of the many movies I missed watching this past october, and if I get the urge, I am sure I can track down the few others I didn't see.  I just love watching those old horror movies!  So much fun!

And that's all for tonight!  I might come up with a movie to review before Turkey Day, but if not, have a Happy Thanksgiving, everyone!  :-)

#31: Night of the Living Dead (1968)

It's always hard to find a good closing movie for October's Horror Movie Review-A-Thon.  There's so many old favorites I want to include, and I know most everyone is out doing Halloween stuff or, if you're me, watching other horror movies.  I've never reviewed tonight's movie before (that I recall), but it's certainly a lot of people's favorite.  I caught it on Turner Classic Movies.

Night of the Living Dead (1968) begins like most horror movies, with people in a car heading to an unknown destination.  When the final destination isn't the Twilight Zone, most of the people in the vehicles usually end up dead.  In this case, it's a brother and sister heading to a distant cemetery to honor their deceased father.  There's some intial dialogue, and then it's all "THEY'RE COMING TO GET YOU, BARBARA!  THEY'RE COMING, BARBARA!  THEY'RE COMING TO GET YOU!"

Everyone knows the line now, because this movie made it famous.  It's in black and white, which I don't find ideal, but that's really the only issue I have with it.  Like Sabrina says in her opening dialogue in the Netflix series, back in the old days, people were under the assumption that long-dead folks were still suffering from rigor mortis, so the zombies moved slowly.  Fast-movies zombies weren't featured until Return of the Living Dead (1985), which not only made the dead fast, but smart, making them much more of a threat.  They're slow as dead folks in this movie, and typically overpower the usual adult male through strength of numbers.  Still, there's a lot of them, and in the dark, they are hard to see.  They don't feel pain, or pity or remorse, and they absolutely WILL NOT STOP, until Sarah Connor is dead!  Oh.  Wait.  Wrong movie.

Effects were good for the day, acting was decent, and the plot was good enough to spawn the modern zombie horror movie genre, so who can fault this movie?  Not me.  It even passes the re-watchability test.  I always wonder what happened to the brother, who hit his head on a gravestone at the beginning of the movie and was knocked unconscious, but I don't guess they ever show him again.  Or maybe I missed it at some point.  There's even some minor nudity (okay, I saw a butt).  Like most horror movies, there's also a lot of conflict amongst the living, on how to deal with the zombie threat.  Or, maybe the other movies are all subconsciously trying to emulate this movie, who knows?

There are a lot of movies that try and encapsulate the holiday, and I think John Carpenter's Halloween (1978) and Trick 'r Treat (2007) do it better than most, but this one isn't too bad.  The title of the movie is Night of the Living Dead, which is basically a summary of what's supposd to happen to the spirits of the dead on All Hallow's Eve, in that they return to walk the earth once more.  Also, Barbara and her brother are at the cemetery to honor their deceased father, which sums up the other holiday around this time of year, the Mexico's Day of the Dead holiday.  Then, all the living people in the movie spend the night in a boarded-up house trying to avoid the windows, listening to the social media of the time talking about zombies!  Which, is pretty much how I avoid trick or treaters, and save all the Halloween Candy for myself.  :-D  What's more Halloween than that, I ask you?

That's it for this year's OHMRAT!  Thirty one horror movie reviews in 31 days!  Yeehawww!  I feel like I just ran a marathon 26 miles up the slopes of Mr. Everest, without oxygen!  Yeah, when you sit in a chair and play computer games all day, any activity is a workout.  :-)  As soon as I finish Sabrina and the Haunting of Hill House on Netflix, I'll review those for you, if I'm not in a diabetic coma from all the Halloween Candy.  Happy Halloween, everybody!

#30 - Victor Crowley (2017)

It's always tough finding good horror the last few days of October.  Usually, everyone's off at Halloween parties, and there's those last few horror movies premieres they try and sneak onto the Premium channels, but there's never any warning, so you miss all the good ones.  For instance, I missed 1987's "The Monster Squad" earlier!  That's like the best kids' horror movie, ever!  Plus, Wolfman's got naarrrrdddsss!

Victor Crowley (2017) is a continuation of the Hatchet movie series.  Victor Crowley was a deformed boy in the swamps of Louisiana, who was accidentally killed in a house fire by his own father, who was trying to break him out of the house with an axe.  Since then, Victor Crowley's unkillable ghost hunts the swamps every night, looking for folks to kill...

The first three Hatchet movies starred a series of B-list celebrities looking for a paycheck, and this one... doesn't.  One of the survivors of the previous movies makes an appearance, in fact, the whole movie is pretty much about his appearance, but there's much less Victor Crowley, even in the movie that bears his name.  Effects were okay, it was pretty much the same thing as Hatchet 3, with less Danielle Harris.  The most exciting part of the movie was the brief nudity, and that was only half a butt-cheek.  Wouldn't watch again.  Probably the end of the Hatchet series.  I saw it on Cinemax on demand, I think, if you want to check it out yourself.  See if you don't agree.

In other news, I tried to finish up the Haunting of Hill House, Castlevania and Sabrina (all on Netflix), but I haven't got any farther on the Hill House one and only just started the other two.  To be fair, they all look like they are worth at least one viewing.  I love the Castlevania cartoons so far, and I watched the first episode of Sabrina just to see how horrible it was.  As it turned out, it wasn't horrible, but decent.  I didn't have time to watch any more than the first two episodes, but so far, looks pretty good.  I'll have to check it all out in November, when I have more time.

One more movie to go!  I have no idea what it's going to be.  Hopefully I can find something to watch while I'm doing all the other Halloween stuff tomorrow.  I've seen Trick 'r Treat already once, the Shining, and maybe I can squeeze the Fog in at some point.  Maybe even Night of the Creeps.  Meh, probably not, but hey, those movies will still be around in November.  :-)  Happy and safe Halloween, everybody!  See you tomorrow for the end of OHMRAT (October Horror Movie Review-A-Thon) 2018!

#29: Dead in the Water (2018)

Yep, I'm still reviewing Syfy movies.  Tonight's was an "original SyFy production" but it also said it was produced by "Blue Ice Productions" so I don't know who made it.  It was on this past Saturday, but it was on SyFy, so you know where to find it, right?  Right!

Dead in the Water (2018) starts out with an all-female crew on a ship at sea, probably a bunch of PETA folks looking to tag a Japanese Whaling Vessel doing some illegal whaling.  Then a fog bank rolls in ahead of a monster Category 3 Hurricane, and the engine conks out.  The crew knows they can't keep the ship headed into the waves without the engine, and if they don't, the ship will eventually capsize and sink.  To complicate matters, they catch sight of someone floating out at sea, and attempt a rescue mission in the middle of a fog bank while waiting for the storm to hit.  And that's just in the first fifteen minutes.

Dead in the Water starred a bunch of people I've never seen before. The acting was decent, but the movie was all pretty much action and suspense.  Everything happens out at sea, mostly during a raging hurricane.  The action is pretty frequent and consistent.  Special effects were decent, and if you want to know if this movie passes my qualification for a horror movie, yes, it does.  I don't want to give anything else away by saying anything else, because this movie actually isn't too bad.  I might even watch it again at some point, if they show it again on SyFy.

In other news, it's October 29th and I've only got two movies left to review for this month!  Can I do it?  Can I complete OHMRAT 2018?  Who knows?  Not me, that's for sure.  I wake up every morning not even knowing what day it is, feeling pain from my old injuries, groggy from my usually-poor night's sleep.  On the plus side, I always wake up looking this good, so, there's that.  :-D

That's all for tonight.  Catch you guys tomorrow!

#27 + #28: Evil Dead, Bubba Ho-Tep

Double Feature weekend continues with a pair of Bruce Campbell movies!  Bruce Campbell has done a lot of horror movies over the years, most notably his Evil Dead movies, which were briefly turned into a series for a couple years.  Let's start with Bruce's first movie (or at least, the first I ever saw him in), Evil Dead!

Evil Dead (1981) is the primordial cabin-in-the-woods movie, where a bunch of college-age kids decide to head back to nature and end up discovering an old book called the Necronomicon that summons Demons.  In typical dunder-headed-ness, they read from the book, and...  yup!  You guessed it.  All Hell breaks loose.  :-D

So, of course Evil Dead stars Bruce Campbell.  The movie was made on a tight budget, in 1981, by what were basically a bunch of college kids.  Honestly, I'm amazed the movie holds up so well today, but it did spawn two sequels and a series, so maybe it's not that suprirsing.  Bruce Campbell is so young in this movie that he looks like a teenaged Mr. Spock, but acts like William Shatner on Crystal Meth.  Several awesome scenes set this movie apart from all the others that tried to copy it, like the scene where the trees come alive and...  but, I don't want to give anything away.  If you want to see this, I caught it on HDNet (one of the cable movie channels), but you could probably see it on youtube or something.  I've seen this one several times, so it definitely pases the rewatchability test.

Evil Dead 2 was sort of a reboot/remake of Evil Dead, also starring Bruce Campbell, and one of my favorite movies of all time (OF ALL TIME!).  There's this scene in Evil Dead 2 that's missing from evil dead 1, maybe because they made enough money with the first movie to fund some better effects for the second one.  Anyways, there's this scene in Evil Daed 2 where Ash (Bruce Campbell) starts giggling at the absurdity of all the evil things happening to him, and everything in the room, books, mounted deer heads, lamps, starts laughing along with him.  It's the scariest moment of the movie to me, because Ash is basically losing his shit, when he needs to keep it together the most to survive.  Ash has a goddamned good laugh at losing his sanity, perhaps even slipping all the way over the edge before finding his way back, and just that scene alone is what makes Evil Dead 2 one of the best movies ever.  All inspired by Evil Dead, which was successful enough to spawn Evil Dead 2!

Bubba Ho-Tep (2002) is about a lost mummy who comes back from the dead and starts hunting elderly residents at a nursing home, hoping to suck their souls out of their asses to feed himself.  Unfortunately for "Bubba Hotep," two of the residents at the Elderly Care facility are ex-president Kennedy and Elvis, or perhaps they're just senile old farts who think they are those people.  Can Elvis and Kennedy stop the evil mummy and save the residents of the facility, before there aren't any left?

My summary gives away some important plot points, but I do that on purpose, because the movie can be a little confusing at times.  Bruce Campbell plays Sebastian Haff, an elderly Elvis impersonator (or perhaps the real Elvis) who fell off a stage and broke a hip and was in a coma for a number of years.  Ossie Davis (yes, Ossie Davis in a horror movie, classing up the joint) plays the former president Kennedy (yes, the one who was assassinated), who can seemingly walk better than Elvis but needs a motorized wheelchair to get around.  Yeah, so the movie gets a little confusing here and there.  Reggie Bannister (Phantasm) plays the administrator of the nursing home, and Daniel Roebuck plays a hearse driver helping to take out the bodies of the elderly residents.  They don't show Bubba Ho-Tep very often, and I barely managed to catch it on HDNet (again, one of the cable movie channels), but you could probably catch both of these movies there before Halloween's over with.

Holy crap, I just noticed this is my 500th post!  :-D  Woohoo!  Go, me!

That's all for tonight, enjoy Bruce campbell in these two movies on HDnet if you can get there, and if not, there's always youtube.  And, I'm caught up!  Three more movies to reivew, and BAM!  October's almost over!  Hope you're getting your scares and candy in before it's all gone!  See you tomorrow night with another review!

#25 + #26: Tales from the Hood 2, Tales of Halloween

We're in the home stretch!  Down to the wire!  Nearing the goalpost!  Heading in for a lay-up!  I think I've run out of sports euphemisms!  Yep.  I did.  Anyways, only a few more days left in the month of October!  October Horror Movie Review-A-Thon (aka OHMRAT) is almost over, and I'm 3 days behind!  Can I catch up in time, or will I FAIL to review 31 Horror movies in 31 days, for the first time EVER??  :-o

Tales from the Hood 2 (2018) is an anthology of horror stories, connected by a story about a black story-teller called in to help teach a police robot developed by a white industrialist to identify criminals and deal with them accordingly.  There's 4 stories within the 5th story, starring Keith David as the story teller, and honestly, he's the only one I recognized.  I'm not giving a summation of the plot for this movie, because there's 5 plots, and that's a lot of...  plotting.  Yeah.

Effects were okay, acting was decent, I guess my biggest issue with this movie was the writing.  There's a lot of racism in this movie, and the stories aren't exactly scary as much as they are racist.  It doesn't take much to scare me, but a giant cloth puppet really doesn't give me the heebie-jeebies, you know?  I can't really recommend this one at all, since there's nothing new here, and none of these stories even sticks out in my memory.  Catch it on Netflix if you want to see if there's any actors you guys recognize better than I do.  Props to Keith David for his over-the-top portrayal of Portifoy Simms, the story-teller.  I find it amazing that Mr. David's first role (and the first time I remember seeing him) was as Childs in The Thing (1982), and all the amazing roles I remember him from over the years.  That man deserves a goddamned Oscar.  Maybe not for this role.  I'm thinking more, lifetime achievement Oscar.  Over thirty-six years of acting under his belt, and he's still always fun to watch!

Tales of Halloween (2015) is another horror anthology, this time with ten tales only loosely interconnected by happening all in the same town, and they don't interconnect with each other at all (like in Trick 'r Treat).  Adrienne Barbeau (of The Fog fame, also another good horror flick to watch) is the radio DJ loosely introducing the tales and performing the background narrator role, though she's barely heard from during each of the ten-minute segments.  I can't say as I recall any of the other actors, but there were ten stories, so maybe I missed someone I should have recognized.  Again, not going into plot here, because that's a lot of PLOTTING!  PLOTting, geddit, geddit?  PLOTTING!  BWAHAHAHAHAAAAAAA!

Okay.  You're staring at the screen and shaking your head.  I get it.  Moving on.  Tales of Halloween is nowhere near as good as Trick 'r Treat, and it never will be, but if you're looking for a lot of semi-Halloweenish tales that have nothing to do with each other crammed into ten-minute segments and stuffed into one movie, this is a fair bet.  If you want to watch it, it's also on Netflix, but I honestly can't recommend this one, either.  The only story I really remember was the one about the animated Jack-o-Lantern, and only because, funny, but come on, so expected.  You want a horror anthology, grab a cold beer and a slice of pumpkin pie, and go for the much-superior Trick 'r Treat (which, according to imdb.com, has a sequel coming out at some point in the future).

I know, that leaves me still one movie behind, and by tomorrow night, I'll be two movies behind.  Well, I guess I'm doing another double-feature tomorrow night, then!  Yeah!  I love double features, gives me an excuse to watch 4 hours of horror movies and then gab about it on the internet like I have a fucking clue what I am talking about!  :-D

That's all for tonight!  See you guys tomorrow night for another double movie review!  Enjoy those Halloween parties while there's still time!

#22 - #24: Kindred, Boogens, Van Helsing

I'm trying to catch up after falling behind again, so let's just call this, throwback... wednesday?  Interesting tidbit of information, Wednesday is named after Wodan, or Odin, who many of you know from Marvel's Thor movies as Thor's dad.  Thursday is obviously named after Thor, and Friday is named after Frey, one of the other Norse Gods.  Saturday is named after Saturnus, one of the greek Titans, who ruled before the gods of Mount Olympus (Zeus, Apollo, etc).  Interestingly, the feast of Saturnalia was celebrated in ancient times as today's Xmas.  Sunday is obviously named for the Sun (Sun worship was pretty popular back in the old days), and I bet Monday is probably named after the Moon.  Tuesday is named after Tyr, another Norse god.  I bet you didn't know all that, did you?  Well, now you know, and knowing is half the battle, as G.I. Joe cartoons always told me.

Boogens (1981) is about a bunch of folks trying to re-open a silver mine.  Apparently there was a cave-in way back in the day, and some miners died, and the mine was shut down.  So, along comes modern day (well, 1981 anyways) civilized folks, and they want to re-open the mine, so they send in some folks to blast a hole through the cave-in.  Well, that goes all well and good, but then they find the bones.  With all the meat chewed off.  And that's never a good sign, is it?

I had to watch The Boogens on YouTube, because let's face it, this movie is 37 years old, and wasn't that great to start with.  There's a bunch of actors you've never seen or heard before, who are probably all dead by now, but this is a pretty decent movie for the early 80's.  There's a little nudity, mostly from Rebecca Balding, whose own IMDB page describes her as "adorable."  There's explosions, fires, and some weird creepy things from inside the mine, so what's not to love?  You've seen it all once you've seen it once, and I've seen it like 3 times now.  YouTube it if you want to see it.

The Kindred (1987) is also about a bunch of people who don't know much of anything.  This time, a Doctor's mom is passing away, and on her deathbed, she asks her son to destroy her research, and mentions that he has a brother named Anthony.  The Doc has no idea who this Anthony is, but heads up to the house with some lab assistants to see if he can even finds his mom's research, and what do you know, but Anthony shows up!  Only, Anthony is not quite the Doc's twin, but lives in the basement, and...  well, watch the movie and find out.

The Kindred has Amanda Pays (Leviathan) and Rod Steiger (Mars Attacks), and..  you know, I have no idea who the rest of the cast is.  Anyways, the monster is a little goofy looking, but that was the 80's, and  effects weren't perfect.  I also caught this on Youtube, but the video looked like it came off an old VHS tape, so it wasn't very good.  The movie itself wasn't bad, but could use a little more 80's T&A.

Van Helsing (2004) is about a man who can't remember who he is, hunting down monstrosities and evil beings in the name of a secret church sect.  Van Helsing finishes off Mr. Hyde, and then is sent to Romania in search of Dracula.  There, he meets up with Anna Valerious, last of a line of a powerful family that has sworn to end Dracula's reign of terror.  Sadly, despite trying for 450 years, they haven't yet managed to succeed.  Can Wolver, uh, I mean, Van Helsing, finish off Dracula and save the line of Valerious, before it's too late?

Van Helsing is probably something you guys have seen before, but I can't recall ever reviewing it.  Maybe I did before, and maybe I'm just getting old and senile.  It's got Hugh Jackman as Van Helsing and Kate Beckinsale as Anna Valerious, and what more do you need to know?  I caught it on one of the cable channels, and they actually mention Halloween in the movie.  There's also Dracula, the Wolfman, and Frankenstein, so this is about as Halloweenie as a movie can get.  Good action, quite entertaining, and even has some humor in it.  Seen it before and I probably will again.

In other news, James Karen has passed away at the age of 94, whom horror movie fans will remember as Frank from Return of the Living Dead, the best zombie movie of all time (OF ALL TIME!).  The last thing I saw him in was in 1988, and yet he's been quietly making movies and TV show appearances all this time, right up until his death.  Talk about flying under the radar, and yet I can still remember his every scene from Return of the Living Dead.  Oh well.  RIP, James Karen.

That's all for tonight.  Hope you guys have a good one!  :-)