As October draws near...

Last October, my girlfriend jessrawk and I ambitiously set out to watch a minimum of one horror movie a day. We succeeded, and are going to do the same thing this year. Now that I have an appropriate place to write about such things (this very website you are visiting!), you can expect to hear about it over these channels.

However, since many of you probably didn't read my note on facebook, or simply need suggestions for horror movies in the coming month, I've decided to post last year's write up for posterity. Other things will be blogged about too, I promise.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The Challenge: Watch 31 horror movies (or horror-comedies), one a day, for the month of October. Well, I did it. I surpassed it too, by watching another four. What follows is a review for each film, and a rating if you don’t feel like reading what I’ve wrote. What I’m particularly proud of is that except for two films (Land of the Dead and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre), these are all films I’d never seen before. Also, with the exception of Quarantine (see below), these movies are the original deal. No shitty remakes.

If you’ve been tagged, it’s because you watched at least one of these with me, or discussed this project with me at some point, or might find it interesting. If you’ve been faithfully following my status updates through October, you may have noticed the ratings have swapped for some movies. Consider that a bell curve, of sorts. A lot of the earlier movies got a higher rating than I felt they deserved upon writing these reviews…

About these ratings – they’re subjective. Mixing my film background with my personal tastes is a tough business. Keep in mind, by and large, these films are meant to be scary, but as horror is a personal thing, I’m not rating them based on how scary they are. Here’s a rough guide to the grades;

A = Excellent, a must see
B = Very good, I’d watch it again
C = Worth Seeing
D = Maybe don’t bother
F = Worthless
+ = Superior for this grade
- = Just barely makes it into this grade

The Last Broadcast – B
This film is a fake documentary, concerning a triple-homicide in the New Jersey pine barrens, the stomping grounds of the legendary New Jersey devil. The filmmaker explores the victims, the suspect who was tried and found guilty, and looks at further evidence suggesting the suspect’s innocence. This movie came out before the infamous Blair Witch Project, and uses a lot of ‘found footage’ from the murder victims (who just happen to be local cable TV-personalities). Shockingly realistic, this movie is a great example of modern, low-budget filmmaking. And the best part – it’s got closure!

Eating Raoul – D+
An independent film that satires Hollywood in the 80s, Eating Raoul is about a married couple who discover they can make their financial problems go away by murdering local swingers and pilfering their wallets. Things get a little more complicated when the naïve couple are found out by a Hispanic conman, who offers to get rid of the bodies for them, in exchange for a cut of the profits. This film suffers from time, the jokes don’t hit quite as hard now, and the murder sequences get repetitive quickly.

[rec] – A-
A Spanish movie that was remade in America and re-branded ‘Quarantine’. A young lady reporter and her trusty cameraman tag along with two firemen on their nightly rounds, which takes them to an apartment building where an old woman has been causing a disturbance. Within moments of arriving at the building, one of the police officers on the scene and one of the firemen have been critically injured, and before anyone can leave the building, it has been surrounded by military and police and quarantined mysteriously. This movie is entirely from the perspective of the cameraman, who catches all of the action, and is never seen. Creepy atmosphere, realistic perspective and beautiful special effects make this one a must see for horror fans.

Quarantine – D-
This is [rec] Americanized. I’m not kidding. It came out a year later, and borrowed the same plot, same main characters, most of the shots, most of the lines and practically the same set from the original. Oh, sure, some things are changed – they change the nature of the epidemic (the original nature wouldn’t be as frightening in USA), throws in some extra secondary characters to shamelessly increase the bodycount, and, most disturbingly, shows the cameraman about half a dozen times. Maybe that won’t bother you as much as it did me, and maybe you’d prefer to not read subtitles, but, personally, when I watch a rip-off this blatant, I get angry. It scrapes by being an F because some of the new additions are interesting (like the dog in the elevator).

The Crazies – B+
A plane flying over a small Pennsylvania town crashes, spilling a virus out that either kills its victims outright, or turns them into homicidal maniacs. What follows is the military trying to enforce martial law, and the inhabitants trying to escape quarantine. Wacky editing and some lackluster performances hurt this film, but what makes it good is watching the military handling the situation, and realizing that what happened in 1973 could easily happen 35 years later (and will – the remake comes out next year). Besides, something this campy is always good fun in my books.

28 Weeks Later – D-
Picking up just after 28 Days Later, a British man is reunited with his son and daughter, who managed to make it out of the Country before the rage virus ravaged it. The US has stepped in to help with the rebuilding process until – wouldn’t you know? – something goes terribly wrong. After a brilliant opening scene, the film loses almost all of its steam. I was an enormous fan of the first film, but this one just seemed to have been rushed into the market. It used music from the first film, over and over again, and not necessarily in an effective way, but moreso as a way to remind us ‘Hey, you probably liked the first movie. Wasn’t this music great?’ The film also suffers from a lack of substance – it seemed like it ended somewhat abruptly, and very little edginess from its predecessor was to be found.

Land of the Dead – D+
The fourth of five of George A. Romero’s ‘of the (living) dead’ films, and ultimately the poorest (Diary of the Dead, at least, plays with the form of filmmaking, which is not something Ol’ George seems to do too much in modern days). In this picture, a large gathering of survivors from the zombie apocalypse have banded together in a large, rough-shod city, which, like many modern cities, has a very clear division between its rich and poor. The action comes on two fronts; a man who has been rejected to upgrade from the shanty town to the apartments steals the biggest, baddest zombie-killing vehicle to declare war on the city, and an army of zombies, seemingly sick of being outwitted by the living, begins to learn how to overcome their numerous weak-points, including the use of tools and ability to navigate water. Apart from an entertaining performance from Dennis Hopper and some good ol’ fashioned Romero commentary on society, though, this movie doesn’t do much to thrill. It also has a terrible leading lady, daughter of Dario Argento, who doesn’t quite seem to understand what acting is all about.

The Descent – F
Finally. Someone hybridized a chick flick with the horror genre. A group of six lady spelunkers go into an uncharted area of caves, only to get trapped inside and being mostly devoured by troglodyte-people. There’s more to it than that, though. The main character, you see, lost her husband and her son only a year before in a disturbing car-crash. Said character is constantly seeing this tragedy re-visited again and again in her mind’s eye – even when she’s fighting for her life. While you could argue that some of the in-cavern camerawork is well done, you could also argue that this film’s characters are so implausible, and so unsympathetic, that you’re glad that the whole, catty lot of them are eaten by middle-of-the road special effects.

Last House on the Left – C-
Wes Craven, the horrormaker of the 80s, directed this film, about a group of killers that escape prison, and immediately get up to no good. Starting with the abduction, rape and murder of two teenage girls (who attempt to buy weed from them – see why drugs are bad?), the group then tries to hole up in the home of the parents of one of their victims. The parents find out about this, and go about getting revenge for their little girl. This film is fairly campy, and poorly shot, and doesn’t take itself very seriously – except for a very graphic disemboweling, and very uncomfortable-looking rape scene, which are so intense that they seem to be from another movie. It also features a soundtrack of light-hearted tunes, featuring lyrics about what’s happening in the movie at the moment – I’m not kidding! While one of the girls attempts to flee her captors, terrified, a man with a guitar sings about it.

Pet Sematary – D-
There’s not a lot to say about this 80s classic. The story involves a family that recently has moved out in the country, right by a busy highway. One day, while all of the family but the father is out visiting the grandparents, the family cat is hit and killed by a truck. The father gathers the remains, and, on the direction of a beer-swilling local, buries the cat in an Indian burial ground not far from the house, and the cat comes back the very next day. A few scenes later, the young boy of the family meets the same fate as the cat, and sure enough, Daddy digs him up after the funeral, and transplants the body in the same burial ground. The child re-animates and goes evil. This movie is repetitive, predictable and frustrating to watch. The only saving grace is the aforementioned beer-swilling local, who has a funny way of saying the word ‘road’, and uses the term ‘sometimes… dead is better’ three times in the same speech.

Child’s Play – C-
A wanted man, wounded in a gunfight, busts into a toy store. Using his knowledge of voodoo, he implants his soul into a popular doll, and, once bought by a single mother for her son, gets down the business of getting revenge on the criminals and law-makers that were responsible for his demise. I wouldn’t say Child’s Play is a great movie, but its premise is pretty fun. That little doll sure gets around! If the franchise wasn’t so imbedded in pop-culture as it is, the scene where you discover there’s more to Chucky than there seems would probably be pretty impressive. As it is, though, you already know what’s going to happen, and the film takes its time to get there. Brad Douriff is pretty entertaining as the voice of Chucky, though…

The Tomb of Ligeia – C+
An expanded adaptation of an Edgar Allan Poe yarn, Vincent Price plays an eccentric lord in Victorian England, whose dead wife has returned as a black cat to haunt him. Thrown into the mix, however, is a new wife for Price, that, unsurprisingly, kitty has a problem with. Price’s new wife attempts to figure out precisely what is going on, and why her husband is so strange. In the process, we learn Price is a talent at hypnotism, and has been prone to sleepwalking almost every night since his first wife’s death. The sets in this film are breath-taking, but the film lacks a little in the substance department. Of course there’s a ghost involved – why else would we be watching the movie?

Session 9 – C
This picture is the story of a hazmat team that has one week to fix-up an abandoned mental institution. Fairly quickly, though, a creepy voice gets into the head of the boss of the team, and then the trouble starts. Session 9 is pretty standard horror fare, with a not-so-surprising twist ending, but what it really succeeds with is developing a creepy atmosphere and tension. One of the men finds a group of taped interviews from one of the patients, and becomes obsessed with listening to them, thus giving the audience perspective of what a freak show the asylum was in its heyday. The build-up might not be worth the pay-off, but what a build-up it is.

Children Shouldn’t Play With Dead Things - F
The prick-tease of zombie movies! What we have here is a film with a running time of 90 minutes, the division of which is 70 minutes of exposition and 20 minutes of action. This is compounded by terrible actors, uncomfortable lines, and crappy synthesizer music. The plot, in short, is a troupe of actors goes to an old island which is pretty much a graveyard and a cottage. After a long pissing match between them about who is the tightest with Satan, the lead actor tries to raise the dead. It seems to fail, so they go inside with one of the corpses to have a party. Not too much later – surprise – it actually worked! The dead do rise, and the cottage is besieged. Shitty actor after shitty actor is murdered, most often, disappointingly off-camera, so you don’t even get the privilege of watching them die. The only good thing about this film is the title.

Zombieland – F
Here’s the two good things about Zombieland: A cameo from a famous actor, and Woody Harrelson for about 30 minutes after he’s introduced. The bad things? Everything else about the movie. Jesse Eisenberg puts on his best Michael Cera impression, indie hit of the moment after indie hit of the moment surfaces in the soundtrack, a little girl who has no business surviving in a zombie apocalypse continually confounds all good sense, and a cliché love story blossoms. It’s pretty tame, too, for a film that advertised itself with the notion of ‘zombie-kill of the week’. If you took out the swearing, the movie could have been rated PG. A PG zombie movie? Please. My biggest disappointment with this film will remain a mystery, as I don’t want to spoil it for you, but, please, do me a favor, and the next time you hear someone call this movie ‘an American Shaun of the Dead’, punch them in the balls/tits, and tell them “That was from Ed Staples, and there’s plenty more where that came from!”

Black Christmas – B-
Perhaps the first slasher movie, this is a film about a sorority house that is preyed upon by a disturbed killer. Granted, this is a premise that you’ve seen about 7,000 times by now, but in 1974, this wasn’t really done. The slayings are brutal, the killer is spooky, and the girls aren’t really doing anything particularly stupid (that they are aware of). This picture implements the audience with a certain sense of dramatic irony. You are instantly granted more knowledge about the killer than anyone in the film ever gets, and because of that, it might feel frustrating, though entirely realistic. The twist-ending comes out in the final few seconds of the movie, and drives this irony home.

Let the Right One In – B
This is a Swedish vampire picture about a young boy trying to cope with being bullied at school. Luckily, the single father with his daughter that have most recently moved in next to him turn out to be a child-bodied vampire and her blood-fetching servant. This film not only delivers probably one of the most in-depth portrayals of how a vampire goes about surviving in a modern world filled with forensic specialists and other detectives, but also delivers beautiful cinematography and a fairly decent cast. It’s not very scary, and a lot of time passes between the more dazzling insights into the film’s concept of vampiric mythology, but it’s probably the best non-Dracula vampire film I’ve ever seen.

Horror of Dracula – F
In the late 50s, the British movie studio Hammer began its long, long sequence of Dracula films, starting with this one. Christopher Lee stars as Dracula, who has a British accent, and talks way too fast. This film derails the traditional story of Dracula, and re-invents it by cutting out all the mythology, and trying to get to vampire-hunting early on. What results from this? Well, in short, they get him (eventually), but not before he turns a virgin or two into his progeny, and they, of course, have to die first. It is probably important to mention that this was a VERY gory film for 1958, but those standards are so far removed from ours that it’s not even a little titillating.

An American Werewolf in London – B
This movie won an oscar for make-up effects. Let’s just think about that for a second before I talk about it. An oscar-award winning horror film. It is well deserved, as the make-up effects are so good, even by today’s standards, that you might cringe from watching a corpse-like ghost talk with it’s neck flaps around, like broken gills. As for the story, two backpackers go out on a misty England moor, and are attacked by a werewolf. One dies, the other is cursed to become a werewolf during full moons. After a brief hospital stay, the survivor attempts to go on with his visit, but gets visited by the ghost of his friend, who claims he has to die in order for all the victims of this werewolf’s line to stop existing on Earth. This film is more comedy than horror, and it’s pretty successful in this regard, some dream sequences from the would-be werewolf are particularly hilarious.

Drive-In Massacre – D-
Bottom of the barrel in terms of just about every element of filmmaking you care to name, this film is the simple story of a crazy person who makes victims of heavy-petters at a drive-in. The narrative follows two policemen, one of whom looks a lot like football commentator, and Turducken-pusher, John Madden, who are assigned to the case, as they go around questioning suspects. This is interrupted by the occasional murder sequence, with ultra-flimsy special effects. The ending is also spectacularly confusing, but I won’t explain how in case you feel like rushing out to find a copy of this B-movie gem. The saving grace of this movie are the pretty funny coppers, who try to stake out the drive-in one evening, posing as a very unattractive couple.

Zombies of Sugar Hill – D+
Like it or not, Blaxploitation hybridized with a lot of things, and horror movies are no exception. Truth be told, I REALLY wanted to see the king of these hybrids, Blacula, but it doesn’t seem to exist for download on the internet (which, considering how well-known it is, and how unknown a lot of the movies I watched during this month are, is downright puzzling to me). So what’s this one about? Well, Sugar Hill is a woman spurned when her man is murdered over not selling his nightclub over to some local organized crime. Sugar has connections of her own – including the local voodoo authority, who agrees to put her in touch with Baron Samedi, who in turn gives her an army of walking dead to get revenge with. One by one, Sugar’s enemies get picked off by her crew of zombies, and, unsurprisingly, she wins the day. Uncomfortably predictable, this movie gets by on the charm of the cryptic Samedi and its theme song ‘Supernatural Voodoo Woman’.

Martyrs – F
A French film from last year, Martyrs is kind of two movies in one. The first half, after an introduction in the form of a film about a child’s life after she escapes from being brutally tortured, concerns that little girl, all grown up, busting into an upper-class home, murdering everyone alive inside, and then wrestling with a physical manifestation of her pain and suffering. Still with me? Good. Her best friend since her abduction, another girl about her age, has tagged along with her, and has fallen in love with her, but ultimately believes that she has lost her mind. Following the main character’s suicide, leaving only the best friend alive in the house, it is revealed that she was right all along, and the best friend is taken captive by a group of cultists who seek to find enlightenment by pushing torture victims to the limit of physical abuse. The second half concerns the best friend undergoing such a treatment, in near-silence, as you watch a woman get beaten and tortured. It’s bloody, it’s raw, and it’s full of twists. It’s also, I’m sorry to say, awful. Maybe if they had expanded either half into a film of it’s own, and released them like that, you’d be looking at a decent pair of movies, but you’re not, so you get a muddled treatment with little explanation or development. The ending is a huge cop-out as well, so don’t expect that to satisfy.

Psycho – A
The best film I watched during this project, and perhaps one of the most celebrated horror movies of all times, Psycho is a cinematic treasure. I expected very little, having been subjected to constant pop-culture references from its make-up since I was a little boy, and thus having all the surprise taken out of the film for me. Yet there’s a lot to like, due to the camerawork, and top notch performance of Anthony Perkins. You know how people in American cinema kind of all have the same manner of talking from the 30s to the 50s? Perkins as Norman Bates is perhaps the first actor to break from this mould, going with a much more realistic performance, and thus, closer to today’s cinema. It’s very enjoyable to contrast him with the other characters in the film.

Oh, and the plot, in case you don’t know: A woman steals a large amount of money from her employer and drives from Arizona to California, where she eventually stops at the Bates Motel to figure out what to do next. Half-way into the movie, this woman, who has been our main character, is murdered while showering, leaving her sister and boyfriend to try and figure out what’s become of her.

Deranged – F
A yawn-fest from the same mind that brought you ‘Children Shouldn’t Play with Dead Things’, this film, like Psycho, is based off the unwholesome character of real-life murderer Ed Gein. In this film, our killer, named Ezra is a lonely, religious man, whose mother dies, but continues to speak to him. He digs her body up, and then digs up other bodies so he can make repairs to her. Eventually, he decides to do the same with the living, and cuts down four or five people, including the only person his mother warned him he could trust. I’ll admit, I can be a champion of 1970s low-budget horror movies, but this one just didn’t do it for me. None of the acting was all that great, the action was pretty slow, and easy to predict, and even the special effects of Tom Savini didn’t really win me over to this one. A narrator, who is inexplicably shown, and then inserted into the film to tell the audience what’s going on, is apparently invisible. Why that was necessary, I’ll never know.

The Texas Chainsaw Massacre – A-
Another early Slasher film, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre is also based on killer Ed Gein. This is a much looser adaptation than Psycho and Deranged (which were in, and of themselves, not very accurate to the truth of Mr. Gein), and concerns a group of teenagers who drive out to an old farmhouse that used to be the home of a few of them. Next door, though, is a house full of animal bones, corpses, and a graveyard of cars. When two of the teens stop over to get directions to the local swimming hole, they are brutally slain by Leatherface, an enormous man that wears a severed human face to mask his own identity. Turns out, ol’ Leatherface is working in tandem with his brother, father and grandfather and there’s a method to their bloodshed (don’t eat the bbq!). This film succeeds by showing just enough to turn your stomach, without going into full-blown gore. The suggested action is horrific (a boy in a wheelchair is gutted with a chainsaw, a sexy co-ed is impaled on a meathook), and even the disturbing first shot containing Leatherface remains one of my favorite moments in cinema. The production effects are low, and the chase scenes get a little tired towards the end, but I defy you to find a horror film that does what this one does, only better.

Peeping Tom – B+
Perhaps one of the first films to use someone filming a movie within a movie technique, Peeping Tom is about a man who kills women by stabbing them, in the throat, with a tripod. These murder sequences are done as point-of-views from the killer’s camera, and later, it is revealed that he is editing these snuff sequences into an actual film. The man, in a complicated twist, falls in love with a tenant from his building. He longs to show her what he’s up to, but never wants her to become one of his victims. Made in 1960, this movie isn’t exactly bone-chilling, but it is very well put together, using film techniques which are all over the place today, and having a good cast, and solid suspense. This one is of particular note to those of you who are ashamed of how much you like to play with cameras…

Let’s Scare Jessica to Death – F
Almost as low-budget as you can get, this is a film about a woman who’s freshly returned from her stay at a mental hospital, and moving out into rural… somewhere USA with her husband and a family friend. Upon arriving at the home, they discover a female squatter who the married woman immediately takes a liking to, and offers to let her stay in the home. Big mistake! The married woman soon begins to believe the squatter is a vampire, and has turned the local townsfolk against them. Of course, she’s also crazy, and might be making the whole thing up. That’s the thing to mull over as you watch her seamlessly destroy her own credibility by reacting like no human being you’ve ever met again and again. The actors aren’t really up to the task, sadly, to make this any better than I’ve described it. Ironically, reading about this film in some old horror movie books I have is what inspired this whole challenge, and what a stinker it turned out to be.

Rosemary’s Baby – B+
A newly wed couple rents an apartment in New York, planning to start a family. Prospective Papa is a commercial actor waiting for his big break, and Rosemary seems like she’s going to be a stay-at-home mom. After meeting the very elderly neighbors, though, Rosemary has some rather vivid dreams about Christianity and being raped by the Devil, only to soon discover she has conceived. The doting elderly couple next door prescribes her a milk and herb mixture to drink every day, and hook her up with one of the best doctors in town, who feeds her a lot of foul herbs as well. Meanwhile, Rosemary’s husband’s career finally takes off. While in constant pain from her pregnancy, Rosemary begins to suspect there’s more to her neighbors than there seems, and becomes convinced that they are witches, determined to somehow use her baby as a sacrifice. Most of the film thereafter is spent with Rosemary trying to unearth the truth. The finale is particularly spectacular, concerning the closure we all crave to get. Sadly, the highly stylized dream sequences only happen twice, at the start of the film. If only there were more…

I Drink Your Blood – C+
A group of traveling Satanist hippies shack up in a town with a population of 40, and make the error of beating on one of the local girls during a ceremony. After finding their hideout, the girl’s grandfather tries to administer some justice, only to be foiled and force-fed some LSD. Upon his return, the original victim’s 12 year-old brother takes up the cause, taking the family shotgun out with him. He gets sidetracked by a rabid dog, though, which he ends up killing, and then comes up with the idea of taking the diseased blood of his kill, injecting it into some meat pies, and feeding those to the Satanists. This plan backfires further, when the rabid Satanists transmit their disease like wildfire through the small town. I really can’t say that this movie is groundbreaking in any way, shape, or form, but I loved it based purely on its campiness. This is a great movie to watch if you’re looking for a shlocky horror movie on a rainy Saturday night.

Frenzy – B-
There’s another killer on the loose in Britain. This one likes to strangle his victims with a necktie after raping them. This film focuses more on the exploits of a down on his luck man, with anger issues, but is mistakenly fingered as the murderer after his ex-wife becomes a victim. The film introduces the real killer early on, and dangles this fact at the audience by showing him destroy other important characters in the suspect’s life while the innocent man does everything in his power to evade capture. This leads to a very intense showdown. A very pretty film, with great sweeping shots of locations, Frenzy is a solid thriller, and a good effort from Hitchcock.

Bedlam – D
Probably the earliest film I watched in the challenge, Bedlam is about England in the 1770s, where a wealthy and powerful lord happens upon a mental institution where one of his men was interned, and mysteriously died. His protégé, a woman with a theatre background has a look around the institution, and goes back to her lord to ask him to improve conditions. The operator of the facility, played by Boris ‘Frankenstein’ Karloff, is a sadistic jerk, though, and manages to convince the lord to throw the woman into the loony bin. Once on the inside, the woman manages to befriend the other inmates, and touches their hearts enough into siding with her. Horror in the 40s was very different, and this film probably isn’t likely to scare anyone anymore. It does have a few nice touches to it, though, including a scene where the woman’s romantic interest visits her, and calls her name, only to have every inmate in the asylum parrot his call, confusing her as to who is really trying to call out to her. The ending is pretty sly, too.

The Innocents – C
An adaptation of Henry James’ “Turning of the Screw” concerns a woman being made into a governess of two young children, at the whim of their very uncaring uncle. She goes to their family home, having only a handful of servants for support. She makes fast friends with the little girl, but when the little boy comes home from school, mysteriously expelled, things begin to take a disturbing turn. The Governess is constantly seeing the ghosts of a man and a woman, and by asking the oldest member of staff about them, determines these ghosts are spirits of the previous governess and her lover. She becomes convinced that these ghosts mean to possess the little boy and girl, and she begins to administer her own brand of exorcism. This film is very slow, and personally, I got very sick of the cheery children, but the beautiful shots and sets make it worthwhile.

Rabid – B+
The second film by Canadian horrormaker David Cronenberg, Rabid concerns a young couple getting in a terrible motorcycle accident. The man suffers only a broken hand, but the woman is in critical condition, and has to be rushed to the nearest hospital for treatment, which is a plastic surgery clinic. Somehow, while transplanting a patch of her thigh to her underarm, a mutation occurs, leaving what I can only describe as an arm-clit on the girl’s underarm. This proceeds to make her hungry for only blood, and worse yet, any person she feeds from immediately suffers from a particularly violent version of rabies, which is transferred through saliva. This spreads so quickly that Montreal is put under martial law. The make-up effects of the rabid are very well done, and includes a lot of subtext, including hints of satire to the FLQ crisis (A Trudeau figure justifies martial law to a group of reporters). There’s a hole or two in the plot, but this film is a lot of fun, and could be argued that movies like 28 Days Later are derived from it.

Repulsion – B+
A beautiful Belgian woman, employed as a cosmetics aesthetician in London lives with her older sister, and has an aversion to sex. Or at least, that’s how it seems at first. When the older sister goes on holiday to Italy with her boyfriend, the girl begins to unhinge, and we the audience are treated to the decomposition of her sanity. She begins to see men in her apartment that aren’t there, has vivid dreams about being raped, watches the walls of her apartment crack and split, and leaves a skinned rabbit out to mold and rot. Eventually, this leads to her brief foray into murder. This movie is slow, and probably won’t appeal to non-cineophiles, but watching the psychology of our untalkative main character (who you really can’t call a heroine) plunge deeper and deeper into madness during a self-imposed isolation is pretty brilliant. Roman Polanski made some pretty great movies before his life went to shit.

Halloween – C-
Finally, the movie that is supposedly the father of modern slasher movies (even though it came out years after Black Christmas or Texas Chainsaw Massacre). Michael Meyers, a six year old boy, murders his sister one Halloween night, and gets to spend the next fifteen years of his life in a mental institution for his troubles. He breaks out, days before the fifteenth anniversary of his murder, and heads right back home to kill more women. Luckily, the doctor that’s studied him is hot on his trail, and manages to organize local law enforcement to start hunting the mad man down. Mike puts the knife to a few teenagers before being brought down in the end, and, as there’s a bazillion sequels, you can bet he kills a few more. This movie was engaging enough, but there are downsides to it. Like the soundtrack. It’s essentially the same few bars of music all the way through. Also, the characters aren’t overly likable, to the point you’re glad a lot of them get killed. Probably worth watching, if you like the classics, but if you’ve already seen it, and are considering watching it again, maybe watch some of the other films on the list.

Well, my swift campaign to destroy Achewood has succeeded.

Wow.

Thanks to the talented jessrawk for bringing this to my attention! Achewood, my favorite, though semi-estranged webcomic has begun to solicit donations.

Given my post last month, I'm not going to say anything on the subject, but in case you are a fan of the comic, the donation link is here.

The Internet, What Can't it Do?

So first watch this.

Then watch this.

Awesome.

Achewood: the Sweet & the Sour

There’s no two ways about it; Achewood is really, really funny.

Chris Onstad, writer of the Time Magazine celebrated webcomic, has been at it for almost nine years now. From its humble, surrealistic beginnings, the comic has evolved into a force of social commentary, often referencing pop culture, taking shots at institutions and trumpeting counter-culture.

Essentially, Achewood is an ongoing narrative of the days of the impossible lives of its protagonists, including Ray Smuckles, a jive-talking, multi-millionaire cat, his childhood best friend Roast Beef, another cat that suffers from several forms of depression and Téodor, a stuffed bear with a penchant for cooking, graphic design and writing product placement-heavy erotica.

Since Achewood first ran in 2001, Onstad has produced over a dozen books, several hilarious t-shirts and been noted in several publications. One might argue that Achewood is top dog of all webcomics. Of particular interest is the strip’s clever dialogue, which has developed expertly, considering the sheer number of characters. Each character has a unique voice which has remained consistent since their development. Another fun aspect of the comic is its ‘alt text’, which is achieved by hovering your mouse of the comic for a split second, and a line of text will appear. This is usually a punchline or comment based on the strip.

Many of the multiple-comic storylines are genius. From Ray's battle with a Nigerian E-mail scam, to Ray's hip-hop loving nephew being transported to 1676 Wales, to Roast Beef being immortalized as a lolcat, to the classic Great Outdoor Fight (3 days, 3 acres, 3000 men.) The website offers a handy (and recently updated) drop down menu to let you navigate to the start of any story in its archives. Classic Achewood is as enjoyable as it is ample.

“So, Ed, what is the problem?”

Well, Achewood has always branched out. Perhaps starting with Ray’s Place, an advice column written from Ray’s perspective, and then several characters started to release blogs. These blogs often linked gaps between strips, when Onstad was bogged down by real life and production schedules. But, as side-projects usually go, these dwindled over time.

Now Onstad seems to be all about his premium subscriber updates. For a mere $3 USD a year, you can get something Achewood every day. Be it sketches, strips or ideas, something gets posted every day. Which must be nice, considering these days, you’re lucky if you get a new public strip every week.

HOGWASH!

I know it seems like not much to complain about, given that almost anyone can afford $3 a year, but I must ask – why is this necessary? Why should fans of this comic have to shell out anything to enjoy its full content when it’s all ready achieved commercial success to the point that most webcomics could only dream about? It’s not as though the fans won’t support the standard merchandise ventures. I myself even bought three shirts as wardrobe for my actors in an independently produced theatrical production, out of pocket. These were not the first items I’d purchased from Achewood either.

Moreover, the length of time between strips coming out makes it not even worth checking the website daily. And recently, Onstad seems to favor strips which are either low or devoid of dialogue. For those of us who have interest in his dialogue or commentary, we are shit out of luck.

I took a year off from reading Achewood due to this very frustration. Recently I came back, and caught up, and it was a grand time. This is the way a web comic should be. You should be able to enjoy it several times a week, or, at the very least, on a regular schedule. Now I find myself frustrated. Just straight-up surly about having to wait for the current storyline to end, in the hopes that something I enjoy more comes up.

Then again, it was scrolling back through old archives of the comic that delayed this entry for so long. I would just get lost in the strip. I’ll always be an Achewood fan, and no matter how disgruntled I get with its current incarnation, the sheer number of comics from the daily comic days are too excellent to not go back and enjoy. Unlike other comics that have driven me from fandom into sheer disappointment, I don’t see anything like Achewood ever coming around.

On a personal note, Onstad, should you ever read this article, I would be a great voice for Ray Smuckles in the animated version, when you’re ready to take things to the next level. I will even personally edit this article, and take each of the negative things said and change them into the most gay-for-pay things you can think of. And you’ve got a pretty epic imagination, sir. That much is evident.

He's Got Black, Plastic Ray-Bans, and He's Coming Out Swinging!

So, this morning, while having my regular morning visit to Fark, I came across an article about 10 Movies that Hipsters Need to Get Over, computer-penned by an intellectual dynamo by the name of Judy Berman.

Before I comment on this, I know some of you won’t read the link, or would prefer a summary, so let me just give you the Cole’s Notes:

- Say Anything
- Wet, Hot American Summer
- the Big Lebowski
- Reality Bites
- Coffee and Cigarettes
- Ferris Bueller’s Day Off
- Rushmore
- Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas
- A Clockwork Orange
- Waking Life
- Me, You, and Everyone We Know

Now, before you start getting as outraged as I did about her posting eleven movies instead of ten… well, actually, no, go ahead. That’s okay to get upset about. Unless this is some kind of baker’s ten, she fucked up.

Also, how the fuck did Kevin “Lunchbox” Smith not make this list? Clerks and Mallrats both fit the bill for her sloppy and far too brief introduction to her criteria in making these choices.

But what I really want to address here is exactly what the hell is a hipster? According to Judy, a hipster would appear to have 80s nostalgia, enjoy critically acclaimed directors, and… whatever Reality Bites and Me, You, and Everyone We Know contribute to Hipster potential. Really, if loathsome quoting of these movies is what makes people a hipster, then a lot of people from before hipsters “existed” are also hipsters.

Is it possible, Judy, that it’s not so much that hipsters keep quoting these movies, as much as it is that these movies are extremely popular and important to our culture? One in particular deserves mention, I feel, because you’re painting it with the same broad brush that you paint many of the others with. Anderson, the Coens and Jarmusch I will tolerate your scathing critiques of – they are not for everybody, especially people that have the phrase ‘get over’ in the title of their article – but Kubrick is going too far. Clockwork Orange – not a film from the 80s or 90s with nostalgic value for hipsters – is not just a good movie, it is a work of art.

Nobody makes movies like Stanley Kubrick. No one ever has, and no one probably ever will. The dude took the rising tide of film culture that was developing in the 60s and established in the 70s, and he ran with it. His films are like watching a moving painting – freeze frame (aka pause) a Kubrick film, post Dr. Strangelove (which, while being my favorite of Stanley’s, is too early to be used for this example), and you will be left with an image that would make an excellent piece of art. Kubrick’s work with scene-structure, editing and sense of timing were excellent, and, more importantly, unique.

I’m getting kind of sick of seeing internet bloggers and other people bandying the term ‘auteur’ around without even fully understanding what it means. An auteur is not a director that is trying to be cool, or ‘artsy’ or anything like that. An auteur is a filmmaker that cultivates a certain style that pervades all of his films. Like the painting styles of Picasso, or Warhol. Hitchcock would have been one of the first true auteurs, though he had far less to play with, due to the time he made the majority of his films in.

This is starting to get me into film student mode, and I’d like to refrain from going too far down that road. Suffice to say, Kubrick is awesome, and I’m sure it has far more to do with how awesome Kubrick’s films are that the greater public at large appreciates and quotes his work. Whether they’re hipsters or not.

In summary: Up yours, Judy. Stop harshing our hipster buzz with your metrosexual-style writings. Also, eleven will never be ten.

Long Live King George

If you’re a fan of TV, you probably keep an eye on the doings happening over at HBO. One particular item of note is their new series A Game of Thrones, which will debut in 2011. Some of you that caught the season premiere of True Blood might have seen the teaser trailer for the series, and if you haven’t, here it is.

Now, since that trailer doesn’t tell you a lot about it, here’s a brief synopsis: A Game of Thrones, written by George R. R. Martin (“the American Tolkien”) takes place in a world that is kind of like medieval Europe, but where seasons go on for years at a time. There are not a lot of magic or supernatural creatures – but there used to be. The story revolves around several points of view narratives, most of which belong to the Starks, who rule the land of Winterfell (the patriarch of which is an Eddard “Ned” Stark, to be portrayed in the series by Sean Bean). After a cryptic invitation from the king of the seven kingdoms, Stark and most of his family relocate to the sinister capital city of their world, King's Landing. Once arriving, Stark finds himself in the middle of a mystery that has repercussions for the entire kingdom. A Game of Thrones has some battles in it, but more importantly, it closely examines politics of a medieval society; those of monarchy, religion, family and military. It is gritty, it is ruthless, and it is a lot of fun to read.

The HBO series will probably be great (as everything they touch turns to gold), and, as I understand it, the idea is to encompass an entire book of Martin’s series in a season. So here’s the problem; there’s only four books published out of seven, and we’re in year five of waiting on the next one. Originally, Martin was publishing them at about the rate of one a year, but book four took a staggering four/five years to come out, and as mentioned, it’s been five years so far for a Dance with Dragons.

Now, yes, this is kind of whining, but let me try to give you an explanation of why book five is highly anticipated – Over the course of the books, many different characters are introduced. When book four was in the works it was so damned long that Martin had to split it into two volumes. Book five is the second half of that volume, and follows many of the characters that are most appealing. In fact, of all the characters left alive (oops, spoiler alert – characters die!), most of the main protagonists from the first book are the ones followed in the fifth. This had the combined effect of making the fourth book somewhat less interesting than the other three, and making anticipation for the fifth book all the more deep and rich.

Having trouble following that? I did say ‘book’ a lot. Let’s try it another way;

Let’s say Ghostbusters 2 was inexplicably delayed way longer than you thought, and it was announced that the second movie was to be split into two further movies. Then, when you and your friends went to watch the second movie, it turned out that only Winston (Who would be in Detroit, looking into franchise options for Ghostbusters HQ), Louis Tully (bumbling around, and trying to make amends for his disastrous client party from the first picture) and Janine (with scene after scene of her descending into madness, alone in the firehouse, ala Polanski’s Repulsion) were in it. No Peter, no Egon, no Ray. The notion would be that Ghostbusters 3 would follow the main three from the first movie, but… it might take forever.

Kind of bullshit, isn’t it?

To make matters worse, Ol’ George is… well… old. Fantasy writers have been known to die from old age. Robert Jordan perished before he could complete his epic saga, and fans of Martin’s have begun to express the same concern. In the most recent publicized interview with Martin on the subject, he claimed to be disturbed by his fans being worried about this (which, I’ll admit, is kind of macabre, but when Martin posts on his blog more often about his love of watching NFL football, and eating excessively than he does about his current book, health-conscious North America cannot help but worry).

No one can force Mr. Martin to finish his book, of course, but I’m pretty sure that being hounded by your fans about it is the price of fame. I, as an amateur writer – who has almost never been able to finish anything timely – can sympathize with his difficulties. But, on the other hand, George, if you are finding the weight of an angry internet following too much to handle, how in the hell are you going to sit down with HBO executives several years from now, the fourth season of your show airing to much accolades, only to tell them ‘err… yeah… it’s almost ready! Another four months, and I might be finished!’? They are going to make a few surly nerds, sitting in their underwear, probably in their basements, bitching and whining seem like a heavenly chorus of angels. In the previously mentioned article, George also mentioned that he no longer gives himself deadlines, but he has in essence given himself a long-term deadline for his next three books. At his current rate of publication, he has little to no hope in hell towards getting the final book ready before HBO is ready to begin production on the series surrounding it.

So, yes, add me to the list of misanthropes that demand satisfaction. Preferably before the end of this calendar year, but, given that this series is my literary heroin of choice these days, I will take it whenever I can get it.

Welcome Welcome

Welcome to the Cult of Pop.

I'm about as experienced with blogs as I am operating forklifts and lightspeed drives, so you'll have to forgive me if this isn't the prettiest endeavor.

MANIFESTO:
To create a group of original writings, focusing on one man's observations about specific items in popular culture. These writings are generally not influenced by other's thoughts and ideas, except for when they are, in which I will reference them.

WHO ARE YOU?
Ed Staples, aka Coop Staples. To summarize that enough that you'll care about who I am, I'm a little fish in a big pond. I'm an aspiring artist, and jack of a few trades associated with that label, but master of none. I'm on a local campus radio station, and... oh, hell, you'll figure it out.

HOW OFTEN WILL YOU UPDATE?
I'll try to post at least once a week. In the unlikely event that this blog gains popularity, i might increase or decrease this at my whim. Yes, I'm basically saying 'don't let this get popular'.

WHAT TOPICS CAN WE EXPECT YOU TO WRITE ABOUT?
Well... This isn't going to be a celebrity gossip blog, or anything of that kind. More likely, it will focus on certain pockets of geekdom, and analyze them as deeply as I feel necessary. Similarly, you won't find a lot of political activism, product reviews or intellectual discourses here on Cult of Pop.

WHAT TONE WILL YOUR POSTINGS HAVE?
Probably somewhere between sarcastic and obsequious.

WHAT THE HELL DOES OBSEQUIOUS MEAN?
From what I can remember, back when I used to play a game called 'Starflight' on my Sega Genesis, it is the height of toadying. Almost to the point of worship.

WHY WOULDN'T YOU JUST POST A DICTIONARY DEFINITION?
Fuck you, that's why.