My Twitter feed has been going crazy over Billy Strings for a while now and I finally checked him out. Gotta say I’m fast becoming a fan. I guess you’d put his genre as bluegrass or maybe newgrass, but he plays a lot of rock and roll covers (including regularly playing the good ole’ Grateful Dead). Dude is a great performer. He’s got a bunch of shows on the Archive, and I just listened to this one and I highly recommend it. Check out “Dust In a Baggy” for a taste of what he’s capable of.
31 Days of Horror: Don’t Look Now (1973)
I recently read a short story collection by Daphne du Maurier which contained the story upon which Don’t Look Now is based so I thought it would be fun to rewatch the film. Truth be told I started it several days ago, when the calendar still read September, but I had to pause it and didn’t return to it until this past Sunday. But since it can be considered a horror film I’m counting it for my 31 Days of Horror collection.
After their young daughter accidentally drowned John (Donald Sutherland) and Laura (Julie Christie) move from their home in England to Venice, Italy. John has been hired to restore an old church. While there Laura meets two elderly sisters, one of whom is blind and proclaims to have “second sight”. She says that she could see the dead daughter standing by the couple while they were eating and that she was happy.
Laura, still deep in her grief, takes solace in this notion and wants to speak to the ladies some more. John, also still deep in grief but maintaining absolute rationality, thinks the sisters are up to something.
That’s the very basics of the story, but in director Nicolas Roeg, and editor Graeme Clifford’s hands the film is much more than the details of what actually happens in the plot. Most of it was shot in Venice and the city comes off as a shadowy, crumbling old town filled with strange characters, dark corners, and ghosts. The film flashes backward and forwards, often for just flickering seconds. It flashes back to the day when their daughter drowned and to moments we’ve already seen in Venice. It flashes forwards as if premonitions of a future they want to avoid.
There is a famous scene in which John and Laura make passionate love (so passionately that rumors persist to this day that the actors were fully engaged on set) and the scene flashes forward ever so slightly to the couple dressing afterward. We see them pull their clothes off to make love then immediately they are individually putting new clothes on for dinner. They kiss passionately then shirts are buttoned. Etc. Over and over throughout the film scenes do this, giving it a dream-like quality. Little moments mirror each other too. We’ll see a reflection in the Venice canals and then a flash of the pond where the girl drowned. Time loops in on itself.
The ending is one of the more startling finishes to a film I’ve ever seen. The whole thing is marvelous. I enjoyed it more this time than the time before.
31 Days of Horror: Hocus Pocus 2 (2022)
I suppose everyone has films that hit a certain nostalgic spot in their heart. Films that we watched at a certain age and loved, and even though we might recognize as adults those films aren’t actually very good artistically, we still love them.
Hocus Pocus (1993) is one of those films for an entire generation, who have now grown up, had kids and made the film an annual Halloween tradition. I was not one of those kids. I was a senior in high school when the film came out, and I completely missed it. In fact, I only just watched the film for the first time last year. A fact I had completely forgotten until my family wanted to watch this sequel the other night.
After a flashback to Salem in olden times the film begins with properly in modern times with three teenage girls who like to play at being witches. Well, I say three girls, but it is really just two of them (played by Whitney Peak and Belissa Escobedo) the other girl (played by Lilia Buckingham) has moved on. She’s got a boyfriend and has become popular and has completely left the other two behind. This creates some of the central drama.
I liked this part of the story. The teens trying to figure out who they are (and who they are just might be witches) were interesting and fun. Not amazing, mind you, but I was there for it. One of the dads is played by Tony Hale and he’s always a joy to watch. Sam Richardson owns the local magic shop and he is a delight.
Then the three witches from the original movie show up (Bette Midler, Sarah Jessica Parker, and Kathy Najimy) and my interest level flew out the window. Initially, the tone of the film balances humor, witchcraft, and teenage drama with sweetness, but once those three arrive it becomes a much broader, much dumber comedy. They have their moments. There is a scene in which they create basically a flash mob singing Blondie’s “One Way Or Another” that’s pretty fun and there are some funny moments with them not understanding modern life, but mostly I found them rather annoying. Whenever they were on screen I found myself wishing they weren’t.
I suspect those who have that nostalgic feeling towards the first film will enjoy this one. My wife seemed to like it and my kid laughed quite a bit. I found it an enjoyable enough way to spend a Saturday evening with my family, but I have to admit I was mostly waiting for the credits so I could watch another gore-soaked blood-bath by myself.
31 Days of Horror: Mark of the Vampire (1935)
Thanks to tometheridge57 for recommending this one to me. Directed by Todd Browning, who had helmed Dracula just four years earlier Mark of the Vampire is another film where Bela Lugosi stars as a bloodsucker.
The story, frankly, isn’t that interesting. It involves a gothic castle, some folks showing up dead with bite marks on their necks and blood drained from their bodies, and a professor who has come to investigate the matter. There is a plot twist in the final act that I won’t spoil but that I found rather unappealing. But it oozes style and gothic charm. The castle sets are fantastic and the monster effects are quite wonderful.
Legosi doesn’t have that big of a role, but he’s wonderful, even if he is essentially reprising his role as Dracula. Lionel Barrymore plays the professor and I have really come to love him in just about anything he does.
So, if you’ve seen all the Dracula movies but still need a Legosi as vampire fix, this movie is for you.
31 Days of Horror: Lady Morgan’s Vengeance (1965)
If you paid any attention to my last post then you might have noticed that this film does not appear on my list of horror films to watch this month. That’s because it is part of a four-film boxed set from Arrow Video entitled Gothic Fantastico: Four Italian Tales of Terror which appeared in my mailbox today. I’ll be reviewing the entire set for Cinema Sentries in a few days or so, thus I’ll not say much about it here.
It is a surprisingly good film about a woman who marries a man she doesn’t love and finds herself in an old Scottish castle. Her husband and her staff begin gaslighting her, and she starts seeing spooky things and hearing spooky noises, and then she’s killed. Her ghost seeks some pretty fun revenge on those responsible for her death. I’d say that was a spoiler but those details you’ll find on the back of the box so it isn’t really a surprise.
I love a good gothic horror story and this has plenty of creeping sets, shadowy lighting, and billowy gowns. It is definitely worth checking out if you are into that sort of thing.
31 Days of Horror
Obviously, I like movies. Which is a funny thing for me to say since I feel like most of you had no idea I liked movies until I suddenly started flooding this blog with movie stuff after a decade+ of posting nothing but live music.
I’ve always liked movies. Some of my earliest memories are seeing movies like Return of the Jedi and The Goonies in the theater with my family. As a teenager going to the movies was the one thing I could do with my parents that didn’t end up in a fight or me thinking they were the dumbest people in the world.
That love has grown with me in my 4 plus decades of life on this Earth. The pandemic has only boosted that love. Having to stay at home all the time for 2 years or so led me to watch a lot more movies than usual. I used to watch a little over 100 movies a year, or about 2 movies a week. For the last three years, I’ve watched over 300 movies each year, or at least one movie a day. That’s a little misleading as I don’t really watch one movie every day. Throughout the week I often don’t watch a movie at all, but I make up for it on the weekends.
To help with my movie watching I’ve started creating monthly themes. I’ll choose a genre, or a director, or maybe a country or time period, and then try to watch as many movies from that theme as possible during that month. This helps me watch a lot of movies I might not normally watch, and it expands my understanding of cinematic history. Left to my own devices I’d wind up flipping through Netflix or some other streaming service, watching the same movies over and over again, or at the very least usually choosing safe films that won’t challenge me.
I like horror movies too.
This leads us to October. I’m not the only one who chooses monthly themes for my movie watching. Twitter is full of hashtags directing folks to watch certain types of movies during certain months of the year. October is probably the most popular month for this sort of thing as Halloween leads people to watching horror movies. I usually tag my movies this month with #31daysofhorror but others use things like #hooptober (for Tobe Hooper, director of such films as Poltergeist and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre), as well as many others.
I decided it would be fun to share my list of films that I want to watch here, as well as post about each movie I watch when I watch them. I probably won’t review everything, but I’ll let you all tag along with my viewings.
You can find the list here on my Letterboxd page. If you happen to have a Letterboxd account please follow me, and I’ll do the same.
I won’t watch every movie on the list. I chose 31 movies as there are 31 days in October, but I won’t watch one horror movie every day. Some days I’ll watch a movie with my family (who don’t like horror movies) and I’ll have some official reviews to do for Cinema Sentries. I’ll also likely get in the mood to watch something not on the list. But the list is a good way for me to watch things I’ve been meaning to see and never get around to. It also helps me when I can’t think of something good to watch.
It is, perhaps, a little heavy on the Italians. I got in a Giallo mood while making it. And there aren’t enough true classics, or modern movies in there either. Over the last few years, I’ve watched all of the classic Universal monsters which is why not many of those appear here. I did include one Mummy movie which I haven’t seen. I think I only included one Hammer Horror film on the list as well, and I’ll likely search out a few more of those.
Every year I try to watch all the movies in a single franchise. Previously I’ve watched the Friday the 13th movies, the Nightmare on Elm Street movies, and the Halloween movies. This year I’m thinking of doing all the Hellraiser films.
Anyways, this is my list and I’m sticking to it. I’d love to hear your thoughts.
The Friday Night Horror Movie: They Live (1988)
John Carpenter is one of my favorite filmmakers. Not every film he’s made is an all-time classic. Let’s be honest here and say he’s made a few outright stinkers, especially in his twilight years. But his best films (Halloween, The Thing, Assault On Precinct 12, Christine) are pretty darn fantastic. During his height, even the films that didn’t quite achieve ultimate excellence (Big Trouble in Little China, The Fog) are still renewably rewatchable.
For tonight’s Friday Night Horror Movie I chose They Live which is perhaps more science fiction than horror, but I’m rolling with it anyways. If you are a stickler for this sort of thing then please note I did watch Carpenter’s remake of Village of the Damned earlier tonight and you can count that one for me.
It has been a really long time since I’ve watched They Live so I’m pretty excited to give it another go.
The House by the Cemetery (1981)
It is almost October which means it is almost Halloween which means I’ll be watching a lot of horror movies. I should be creating a list for my #31DaysofHorror and #Hooptober hashtags (more on that later) but for today I just watched an old Italian horror. Lucio Fulci was an Italian director who made lots of films in lots of genres but is mostly known today for a series of Giallo and Horror films, most of which included high levels of graphic violence (he is sometimes called the “Godfather of Gore”.)
The House by the Cemetery is not his best work, nor his worst, but it is a pretty good example of what he is about. The story is hard to follow and mostly nonsense. The screenwriter, Dardano Sacchetti, says he was inspired by Henry James and Fulci says he wanted to make a Lovercraftian story. I’ve not read anything by any of those authors so I can’t comment on that, but I can say little of what’s on the screen makes much sense.
The story involves an intellectual, Norman Boyle (Paolo Malco) who moves from New York City to a small town in New England. He takes his wife Lucy (Catriona MacColl) and young son Bob (Giovanni Frezza) with him. He’s there to continue the research of his mentor Dr. Peterson, who previously went a little crazy and killed his mistress and then offed himself. All of this was done in the titular house by the cemetery, the house Norman and his family are moving into.
It is a creepy old horror movie house – big and dilapidated, filled with shadowy corners and a scary basement. It is not only located next to a cemetery but also on top of one. Or at least when they pull back a rug they find a tombstone in the middle of one of the rooms. Norman says that lots of homes bury their loved ones inside their houses because it gets cold up there in the winter and the ground is too hard. Sure Norman, whatever you say. There are lots of cold places in this world and I don’t think any of them keep grandma’s corpse in the basement.
People keep telling Norman that they’ve seen him before, that he must have been up in that town a few months prior. Norman keeps denying this. The librarian is a creepy dude who seems to know more than he lets on. A babysitter (Ania Pieroni) shows up and is found trying to get into the locked basement. Then she gets brutally murdered down there. Bob befriends a young girl who no one else can see and who may actually be a ghost.
None of these things are connected very well. It feels like several scenes are missing. Or the screenwriter got drunk and forgot to write a few pages. But it doesn’t really matter. Nobody watches a Fulci film for a great story. They watch it for the gore and this film gives you plenty.
It is the type of film that not only includes a dungeon filled with bodies chopped into pieces but that quick zooms into the viscera and lingers on the gore. In the very first scene a woman gets a knife stabbed through her skull. If you enjoy handcrafted gore effects, and I certainly do, then Lucio Fulci is your man, and The House by the Cemetery is not a bad place to start.
It isn’t just blood and guts though, that make this worth watching. The story is a bit bewildering but Fulcio does a nice job of creating an eerie atmosphere and keeping things just enough off balance that your left feeling on edge for most of the film’s runtime.
The Friday Night Horror Movie: Cure (1997)
Unlike previous Friday nights, I’ve actually sat through tonight’s entire Horror Movie before writing this post. Theoretically, this means I can actually write a review of it now, instead of making vague promises to tell you what I think of it tomorrow (and then forgetting to actually do so). In reality, it is late, and I am tired, and my brain cannot think of anything to say about it.
Briefly, the plot involves a series of grisly murders being committed by seemingly ordinary people. There is a detective (Kôji Yakusho) trying to understand why this is happening, and an amnesiac (Masato Hagiwara) who may be hypnotizing them into doing it.
The plot is, at times, a bit silly and it is a whole lot enigmatic, but the director Kiyoshi Kurosawa fills it with atmosphere and mood. It is all about the vibe of the film more than the actual plot. I really quite loved it.
Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers – Listen To Her Heart From Live at the Fillmore (1997)
Tom Petty is releasing a new live album called Live at the Fillmore (1997) in November. They just released a nice video featuring “Listen to Her Heart”. I think I have properly embedded it so you should be able to play it in site.
themidnightcafe.org 