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.
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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.
