WEIRD-OUT WEDNESDAY Wednesdays are all about movies that mess with the mind. Among the many titles that I stumbled on for it, 'In the Mouth of Madness' seemed to stick out as a sort of cult phenomenon favourite. To be quite honest, I don't even really remember this movie being a thing, despite the fact that I'm familiar with the title. Considering who is attached to this, it's kind of a wonder it took me so long to check it out. Besides a fresh from 'Jurassic Park' Sam Neill in the starring role, this one's also directed by John Carpenter (who needs no introduction), and written by none other than Michael De Luca, who also penned one of my biggest guilty pleasures, 'Freddy's Dead'). Otherwise, he's better known as a producer. But the 'Freddy's Dead' connection grasped my curiosity just enough to make it a must-see. We open at a pretty heavy-looking psychiatric hospital where patient John Trent (Neill) is paid a visit by Dr. Wrenn (David Warner). Trent strangely seems to insist that he's not crazy, yet finds safety and comfort in the confines of his room, which he has covered in crosses. Trent then recounts the events that led him to be where he is. It begins when Trent, a freelance insurance investigator, has lunch with an insurance company owner, requesting that Trent investigate a claim by Arcane Publishing. Trent is soon attacked by an axe-wielding maniac who, before the attack, asks him if he reads famous horror author Sutter Cane (Jürgen Prochnow). We soon learn that the maniac was actually Sutter Cane's agent, who apparently underwent some kind of mental warp, killing his family, after reading one of Cane's books. Arcane Publishing's director, Jackson Harglow (Charlton Heston), eventually brings Trent in and asks him to investigate the seemingly sudden disappearance of Cane in order to get the manuscript for Cane's final novel published and boost their sales. It's said that his horror books are so popular and well done that they outsell Stephen King by... I forget the exact amount, but it was a lot, and pretty unrealistic when we consider the King, himself. Anyway, tagging along with Trent is Cane's editor, Linda Styles (Julie Carmen), who claims that Cane's novels can cause all kinds of fun mental instability to some of his less stable readers - namely paranoia, memory loss and getting disoriented, to which Trent remains skeptical, believing it all to be some kind of publicity stunt. A clue ends up unveiling a map of New Hampshire, and a location known as Hobb's End; a fictional town in a real state. The pair end up heading towards this fictional town. The thing I kept bearing in mind here was that in 1994, paper maps were still being used, so God knows where these two thought they were going. Regardless, strange things do start happening on their drive, and eventually, they do find themselves in the apparent fictional town. Right around here is where the film sort of starts to go off the rails, but in that fun way we want from a movie known for its "mind-f*ckery". I won't go into too much detail here, but what follows is altogether creative and fascinating, if not a little off-putting at times. I think if I were to give the film full credit for a few things, they would start with the use of practical effects, helping get some of those visuals crawling under your skin. But there are other pretty great effects here that aren't really scary or gross so much as just plain awesome. For those who have seen it, I'll just say that the "face-tearing scene" near the end is one of the coolest things I've ever seen, and despite what people seem to want to call it, there is no blood or gore involved. That, along with a lot of other things going on here, really managed to kick my imagination up a notch, and I was thankful to not see so much of the typical. I do praise this movie for various other things too, effects aside. I really appreciated Neill's performance here, as I felt like I could really buy every emotion he was throwing at me. Beyond that, the very concept of the whole thing is, in its own way, quite terrifying. It does play on the whole aspect of "am I crazy or not?" which can be truly disturbing to some. By no means is this Carpenter's best work. The great subtleties of 'Halloween' aren't there, it doesn't really have a valuable message like 'They Live', and more than anything, it seemed like Carpenter and De Luca were on some sort of crazy drug the whole time they were making this. It has a very "what the hell did I just watch?" feel to it, but I might say that if you're looking for a good, scary, trippy mind-f*ck of a flick, this could be worth your time, if only once. 3/5
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TRICK-OR-TREAT TUESDAY I sincerely need to point out the fact that within several Halloween/Autumn Facebook groups I'm in, the most commonly asked thing has to be about finding some variety of family-friendly Halloween movies. This is pretty much what lead me to this theme for Tuesday, and I figured I'd start with something pretty much everyone can agree is a fine, family-friendly and actually pretty fun Halloween movie. Although I will say from the get-go that, as it's also mentioned in my "20 Family Friendly Halloween Classics" list, this is one of those titles that, while I don't altogether dislike, I still find a bit weak. It's not even something I'd say is bad, really, it's just kind of "there" at this point in my life, and there's actually not a huge nostalgic tie for me with this one. Most who are reading this, if not all, have probably seen this, but just in case, here's a quick plot summary. On Halloween of 1693, in Salem Massachusetts, a little girl named Emily (Amanda Shepherd) is kidnapped by the Sanderson Sisters; Winifred (Bette Midler), Sarah (Sarah Jessica Parker) and Mary (Kathy Najimy). The trio of witches plot to suck the life essence out of the young Emily in order to make themselves younger. Ultimately, they succeed, while her protective big brother, Thackery Binx (Sean Murray), fails to save her and is thus cursed by the witches to be a cat for eternity, living in guilt. Soon, the sisters are discovered by the townsfolk and hanged, placing a last-minute, specific curse on the town. Said curse involves a virgin lighting the sacred "Black Candle" on one fateful All Hallows' Eve sometime down the line. Sure enough, in what was present day, 1993, the black candle is lit by the annoyingly whiney and rather obvious virgin, Max Dennison (Omri Katz), who, with his little sister, Dani (Thora Birch) and love interest, Allison (Vinessa Shaw), explore the old Sanderson cottage; now a local history museum. Long story short, the witches come back to life and ultimately wanna chase down Dani for her youthful essence, but much of the film also involves their chasing of Wini's spell book, which Max took from her during their escape (they escape, by the way). A lot of the comedy from the film comes from these three interacting with modern 90s society; so actually, a bit entertaining to watch in the woke culture of the present day. This is one of those titles where the more I watch it the duller it seems to get for me. But it should also be noted that I sincerely feel as though it's just a matter of me outgrowing something from my childhood. I'm big on nostalgia, as we all know, but for some reason, this one just didn't stick like glue. I can honestly say that this time around, I just found the whole thing very silly and not really that funny, but I can also honestly say that it feels clear that this was something made for kids. Some may question about the whole "virgin" thing here, and whether or not it's "okay" for a kid to be familiar with the term. It sort of leads me to imagine that there's a very specific age group this is aimed at, and I just so happened to fall into that age group in 1993. That said, however, I could very well be overthinking it. Even though I have sort of fallen behind in my enjoyment of this movie over the years, that's not at all me saying "hey, this is a piece of crap, avoid it". I'd just say it's not for me as much as it is for others who would insist on this being a sort of quintessential Halloween classic for a younger audience, or even just a family audience. It clearly has a big effect on a lot of people out there, and I'd never want to take that away from anyone. I'd still recommend it as a great family fun Halloween flick for anyone, but that's based on how much others love it more than myself. If nothing else, I'd give it to the performances of the three witches, who really do keep the movie kinda fun with a dark and admirably in-sync sense of humour. I dunno what else to say though. Take a look before checking out its new sequel and judge for yourself! 3/5 MONSTER MONDAY My idea for Monster Mondays is to explore some of Hollywood's greatest (and perhaps not so greatest) creature features. After all, what's Halloween without a solid collection of monsters? We begin with a title which I quite honestly haven't even seen in its entirety until this viewing. Before going into this I knew three things about it. One, the transformation scene was famous for its use of practical effects from none other than Rick Baker. Two, it was written and directed by John Landis, who also did the music video for Michael Jackson's 'Thriller'. Three, the very bare basics of it being, evidently, a must-see werewolf movie. I'm super thrilled to say that the last bit of info there is 100% true. One thing any film from this era will always score points for from yours truly is that it simply holds up. This is a fantastic example of how if one can become a master of practical effects, one can easily outshine all of the glimmer and glamour of CG effects. Interestingly enough, a lot of it does feel like the era it was released in, but the effects are something I'd probably argue were ahead of their time. This leads me to believe that if you were one of the lucky individuals who got to see this theatrically, you had an awesome time based on the genuine thriller this is. In fact, this film is what inspired Jackson to approach Landis to direct his now-famous music video which to this day stands as arguably THE quintessential song for Halloween, AND is my personal favourite music video of all time. With that info, one can probably imagine that I was pretty ecstatic to see this with fresh eyes, forty-plus years after its initial release. What took me so long? Damn good question. But nevertheless, it really added to my Halloween spirit this year; a much-needed thing considering the past two years were all "Covidified". But man oh man, this could be a bit of a lengthy review this time around because I actually got so much out of this. I was actually surprised to pick up on quite a few moments I've seen referenced in other things as well - namely 'Tiny Toons: Night Ghoulery' with its "Devil Dog" segment. This was kind of like enjoying the "Shinning" segment of 'Simpsons: Treehouse of Horror', then watching 'The Shining' for the first time and getting more out of it because all of the references suddenly made more sense. We open the film with two backpacking Americans, David Kessler (David Naughton) and Jack Goodman (Griffin Dunne) who are trekking across the moors in Yorkshire. With the cold getting to them, they happen upon a pub called the Slaughtered Lamb and head in to warm up. There, they meet a handful of colourful harbinger characters who warn them that when they leave, they should stick to the road, steer clear of the moors, and above all else, beware of the full moon. Of course, we wouldn't have a movie if these two listened, so eventually, the pair gets attacked by an unseen creature who ultimately (early spoiler alert) kills Jack in a pretty terrifying mauling scene - again, some horror that holds up. If you wanna make your skin crawl just find this scene. Anyway, David is also attacked but does manage to survive thanks to some of the local townsfolk and their guns. Now, I should probably mention a Trigger Warning before I get into the next paragraph, as it involves some pretty heavy stuff. Three weeks later, David wakes up in a London hospital and is told that he and Jack were attacked by an escaped lunatic. However, David insists that the culprit was far from human, and much more like a big rabid dog or wolf. While at the hospital, David meets and befriends a lovely nurse named Alex Price (Jenny Agutter), and the pair form a sort of romantic bond over time. But he is also haunted by his now undead friend Jack, who insists that David is now a werewolf and needs to kill himself, which will not only sever the bloodline and allow Jack (and others') freedom from their zombified state, but more importantly, no more harm can come to others. That's got to be a tough pill to swallow if you're told you should do such a horrific thing in order to save the lives of many others. But I digress. This brings me to another thing I give the film total credit for - David is a very rational-minded person. Usually, you take any horror concept, and it's someone saying something along the lines of "You gotta believe me! I saw what I saw!". David doesn't even go there, he just straight up believes that he's losing his mind and wants someone to help him with it. It may not seem like a big deal, but for me, that breaks a lot of horror cliche that existed both before and after this film. I consider it a step forward that this film made in the fight against mental health problems when no one was even really thinking about that stuff as much as they do now. It's downright admirable to have the lead say "okay, I'm losing it, I need help" as opposed to just assuming you're right and everyone else is wrong. For this, I tip my hat to Landis. And my God, how I could go on about how much I enjoyed this. But the scene everyone is probably curious about is the super-famous (at least among cult horror fans) transformation scene. I've seen a lot of werewolf transformations over the years, but this has to be among the best of them if NOT the best of them. The visual flow is a smooth transition, a slow and agonizing process, and may just make one feel sick to the stomach as you're seeing this guy sweating, writhing in pain, and putting on a very believable performance. I don't like torture porn stuff, but that's largely because it's someone doing stuff to someone else. To carry out such a believable performance such as this is admirable, and it's easy to see why this scene took off in werewolf fame over the years. To close this review off though, I have a genuine complaint about the movie. After all that praise, what could it be? Amazingly, it's just the sheer unavailability of this movie! I could not believe it when I checked all of my streaming sources, even YouTube, and couldn't find this anywhere. Of course, this lead to pirating it, and that's becoming a real problem with fantastic movies like these. Somehow, these titles are actually dying off, and we need to pay closer attention to them, lest we lose them forever! I just saw this for the first time and I can't help but feel like I almost missed it altogether. To put it bluntly, streaming services need to do better with their selections if they're gonna be taking everything over! 5/5 SLASHER SUNDAY For Sundays throughout the month of October, I wanted to take a look at some of the overlooked and seemingly unseen slasher movies of the past. One could consider this my answer to my "Under the Radar" page this month... although, that will probably apply to quite a few titles I have on this month's list. Anyway, getting on with things, first up, we have 1982's 'Alone in the Dark'. Please note that in no way, shape or form is this associated with the video game released many years later, OR the God-Awful 2005 movie adaptation of that game. No, no. This is much more along the lines of exactly what I wanted to see from the films on this page. In short, I felt like this was a pleasant surprise to say the least. The story involves a psychiatrist named Dan Potter (Dwight Schultz), who is appointed to an experimental new psychiatric hospital in New Jersey known as "The Haven". Bringing his wife Nell (Deborah Hedwall) and daughter, Lyla (Elizabeth Ward) with him, he is called in to work with Dr. Leo Bain (Donald Pleasence); a man whose security measures tend to be lenient, save for the third-floor patients, who are separated by an electrified door; former POW, Frank Hawkes (Jack Palance); pyromaniac evangelist, Byron "Preacher" Sutcliff (Martin Landau); pedophile, Ronald "Fatty" Elster (Erland van Lidth); and serial killer, John "The Bleeder" Skagg (Phillip Clark), who has a tendency to hide his face from everyone. Potter was sent in to replace Dr. Merton, who has since taken a new position out of town. As a result of their general separation from everything going on, the four "big timers" here soon conclude that Dan must have murdered his predecessor, who was generally good to all four of them. Therefore, they plan to make an escape and do away with not only Dan, but perhaps his family as well. With this, the film, while still having a slasher element to it, is actually much more of a home invasion film. Eventually the four criminals do manage to find Dan's address and do come after the family, which further includes the recent victim of a terrible nervous breakdown, Dan's sister, Toni (Lee Taylor-Allan), who will now be forced to face what she doesn't think she can. The film is entitled so, because pretty much 80% of it takes place during a blackout, which is a good way of not only adding atmosphere, but explain why a lot of more basic and primitive tactics need to be used through the film. But of course, what would a slasher film be without that? What really got me here were the performances by the four psychopaths, but namely (and with no surprise) Jack Palance and Martin Landau who both come across as very threatening and intimidating but in very different ways. The former is more cool-headed but you know he has no problems with killing, and the latter just plain does "crazy" really well. If you decide to check it out, you've gotta let it flow for a little bit until anything really happens. But once things pick up, the whole finale gets quite intense, and the movie does what it sets out to do, somewhat ahead of its time for 1982. I think perhaps what I found most interesting about this was the fact that it was directed by Jack Sholder - the same guy who gave us 'Elm Street 2', which I probably consider the worst, but also perhaps the most fascinating of the series. I recommend checking out 'Scream Queen! My Nightmare on Elm Street' for reference. It was nice to note here that despite what he did to my favourite horror franchise in only its second movie, this does show that he can still do horror and suspense well. Much like with Joel Schumaker and his version of 'Batman', one still shouldn't write him off as a "franchise killer" or something, as he's still got some good stuff to his name. This is another one that's surprisingly easy to find (again, YouTube), but unlike my recent review on 'Sleepless Unrest', this is one I can recommend as a pioneering film for any fan of the slasher/home invasion genre. Perhaps not a masterpiece, it was something altogether enjoyable for what it was. 4/5 SUPERNATURAL SATURDAY We kick October off with a look at the extremely easy-to-access (it can be found on YouTube) 'Sleepless Unrest', which delves into the real-life areas of the famous 'Conjuring' films (arguably some of the best horror films around today). For those who know of the 'Conjuring' films, the interest lies in that they aren't only films about your average spooky haunting but also involve demonic possession. And while the 'Amityville' house has long since been proven a genuine hoax, this film dares to attempt to shake our disbelief in the supernatural and give us some kind of solid evidence of... something going on with the real Conjuring House, located at 1677 Round Top Rd, Burrillville, Rhode Island. The film takes four documentary filmmakers into the house for a period of approximately two weeks, as they explore the house with cameras, sound equipment and the like, trying to pick up on some paranormal activity. They further discuss their nightly experiences as they try to sleep in their eerily empty rooms. In other words, to put it very bluntly, this one is made for those who can suspend their disbelief very easily and may enjoy shows like 'Ghost Hunters' or 'Ghost Adventures'. There's a whole lot of "what was that noise?" and "Oh my Gosh, that door just moves a quarter inch in a drafty house that allows wind in very easily". This kind of this tends to make me roll my eyes a lot, and it's a total cliche of anything like this right now. It's impossible to be scared by that subtle stuff. Most unfortunately, however, the film is generally all made up of that kind of thing, so in my eyes, it's quite honestly a pretty bad take on the whole thing. However, 'tis the spooky season, so I might say that if you're able to look at this as pure fiction and not take it seriously, you can probably still have a fun time with it. It's the same fun time you might have going through a haunted maze. You pretty much have an idea of what's going to happen, but just because it's that time of year, there's still a bit of a fun factor to be had with it. Filmmakers Brian Murray, Richel Stratton, and Kendall and Vera Whelpton are the main subjects here, and I have to admit that this challenge they've given themselves may make for a cheeseball documentary, BUT the idea of spending one night in that house IS still a pretty scary concept, skeptic or not. So I think as a documentary film, it's nothing to write home about. But it is kind of fascinating to see these guys endure whatever they do endure. On-screen, it looks kind of creepy, but it doesn't feel like enough. However, imagining being in their respective shoes, and facing those two weeks of weirdness is enough of a creepy thought. Add to that the way this all ends (stupidly yet somehow eerily, reminding us NOT to disturb sights claimed to be haunted, possessed or cursed) and I'd say that there IS a right audience for this particular title. It's for the very open-minded who believe in this stuff solidly, and are looking for a good scare based on reality. Personally speaking, I have a tendency to lean more towards the skeptic side and look for any sort of rational explanation for any strange goings-on. However, I have had moments happen in my life that, while perhaps not completely supernatural, I sincerely cannot explain. So I remain an open-minded skeptic who will never write off anything I can't explain as "nothing" or "just one of those things". So for me, there's always some very basic entertainment value in something like this, but it's a matter of what happens that will hold one's attention. Sadly, here, things are very weak, especially considering the home's reputation. So if you wanna check it out, I'd highly recommend doing so for free if you can help it. Otherwise, if you want a real thrill concerning this house, I'd sooner just watch the film series or, if you're feeling bold enough, visit the house yourself and see what you can find. 2/5 |