6WH: Week 6.5 – Speed Round and Halloween

It’s hard to believe that six weeks have passed and the big day has arrived, but here we are. As per usual, I have not actually written up every movie I saw during this festive Halloween season. Sometimes a movie just doesn’t fit with a given week’s theme, or perhaps I only caught a portion of it on television, and sometimes I just don’t have much to say about a movie. So every year, I close out the marathon with a quick roundup of everything I saw that hasn’t already been covered. Stay frosty everyone, here we go:

• Sisters – An early Brian De Palma thriller where he, of course, apes Hitchcock… but to good effect. Lots of interesting twists and turns, and a couple of great split camera sequences too. Totally worth watching, actually one of the better things I saw during the marathon. ***

  

• The Hunger – Tony Scott’s first film, it’s an overly artsy vampire flick that features a lot of boring long takes and you never really know what’s going on and you don’t really care anyway and hmmm, lesbian vampire sequence? Visually impressive, with feints towards some interesting concepts, but not much to really sink your teeth into. **
• Idle Hands – Stoner comedy meets horror, and the results are actually a lot of fun, though I think your mileage may vary depending on how much you’re into this sort of thing. Which, for some reason, I am. This may have been one of the most enjoyable movies of the marathon. ***
• The Devil’s Backbone – This is sorta like Guillermo del Toro’s dry run for Pan’s Labyrinth. A ghost story set in a creepy school during the Spanish civil war, this one is very creepy, with some great spook sequences, though it doesn’t quite put you through the emotional ringer like Pan’s Labyrinth (which isn’t necessarily a bad thing).
• Assault on Precinct 13 – John Carpenter’s first film about the last night a police station is open. Staffed with a skeleton crew, they take in a crazy dude who, it turns out, has been marked by a local… gang? It kinda plays out like a zombie film or a siege film. Some really disturbing stuff (including a brutal child murder), but an ultimately effective and tense affair. I kinda enjoyed the relationship between Napoleon (one of the prisoners) and Ethan (the one cop left at the station) and the whole thing works well enough. I haven’t seen the 2005 remake, but this original film strikes me as something that could certainly be improved upon, even if I enjoyed it quite a bit. ***
• Book of Shadows: Blair Witch 2 – This movie is a bit of an abomination. It’s not strictly a found footage movie, but it makes overtures in that direction by having the characters film themselves and watch the tapes later when they’re trying to figure out what happened during a particularly raucous night in the woods. Some interesting ideas at the beginning here… It’s a movie that acknowledges the existence of the first movie – very meta. But things devolve into silliness and boring shenanigans. A potentially decent twist at the end, but ultimately worthless unless you’re a bad movie aficionado. Or Burn Notice fans! *
• Slither – I forgot just how fun and gross and gory and entertaining this movie was. Another take on the pod people, but with some disgusting alien physiology, and lots of other fun stuff. Plus, captain Malcolm Reynolds! James Gunn needs to make more of these (apparently he’s been tapped to make the Guardians of the Galaxy movie, which could be good I guess, but I’d rather he have the freedom to make something wacky like this or Super again). ***
• Creature from the Black Lagoon – I thought I had seen this before, but it must have been one of the sequels or something because I didn’t remember any of this. It’s another one of them Universal monster movie classics, but I don’t think it has fared quite as well as the others. It was entertaining enough and worth watching, but not one of my favorites. **1/2
• 28 Days Later… – I forgot how effective the first half of this movie is, and was wondering why this movie doesn’t loom larger in my mind’s eye… and then I got to that final third of the movie, which just drops off a cliff at some point. It’s still weel made and effective enough I guess, but to me the emotional center of the film (spoiler!) is when Brendan Gleeson gets turned. It’s just so heartbreaking, and the film never really recovers from that. Also, the motivation of the military guys is rather silly. *** (maybe less, but I love that first 2/3 of the movie)
• The Shining – A classic, one of my favorites. I guess it’s a little slow moving, but I love it anyway. There’s just something so discordant, so unsettling about the movie that really gets under my skin. Also worth checking out, Filmspotting’s sacred cow review… ***1/2
• Ghostbusters – Yep, it’s kinda an annual tradition at this point, and this is a true comedy classic. ****
• Ghostbusters II – And this was quite a letdown from the perfection of the first one. Vigo is actually a pretty nice villain, but otherwise, this movie just devolves into ridiculousness. Gah, they drive the Statue of Liberty with a fricken Nintendo controller. **
• Paranormal Activity 4 – I almost forgot to include this, which I think says something about the movie, which is fine I guess, but the series is really starting to show some fatigue at this point. The present day setting and fancy tech gizmos don’t really add too much to the proceedings (though I guess the Xbox Kinect thing was used well enough) and at this point, I’m happy enough with the series, but for the first time, I’m not really looking forward to more movies. But who knows, maybe they’ll surprise me. I’m kinda shocked it’s managed to last this long. Worth watching, but probably the worst in the series so far. **1/2
• Phantasm – Another annual tradition, not much else to say about it, but check out Radio Free Echo Rift’s most recent podcast for a fun discussion of what makes this movie tick.
• Halloween – “You know, it’s Halloween… I guess everyone’s entitled to one good scare, eh?”

  

So there you go. Another year, another crapton of horror movies. By my count, I watched 34 movies and 20 television episodes (I suppose I should have mentioned that I watched 8 Treehouses of Horrorses, but methinks I’ll save that recap for next year sometime). This is actually somewhat less than last year, though I did have a film festival somewhere in there, which is tough to compete with. As usual, I’m significantly outpaced by the likes of Kernunrex, who averages something like 2-3 movies/shows a day. Not that it’s a contest. It’s been a great season, and don’t you worry, next year’s marathon will be on us soon enough. Have a great Halloween everyone!