Tag: horror movies

The Friday Night Horror Movie: Near Dark (1987)

near dark poster
I watched a couple of Halloween movies earlier today (Part III and IV for those keeping track) which I’ll talk about later this weekend. I’m half asleep already so I probably won’t finish Near Dark but I’m making it The Friday Night Horror Movie anyway.

This is a film that has been on my radar for a while now, but I’ve kept putting it off. The Criterion Channel has a couple of wonderful collections going on this month – one with vampires, the other with a bunch of horror films from the 1980s – and Near Dark, Kathryn Bigelow’s vampire flick from 1987 fits both bills. Both collections are sending me way off my list of films I wanted to watch this month, but I can’t say I mind.

I’m only about 30 minutes into the film but so far I’m totally on its wavelength. Stylish vampire films are very much my jam, so I’m tuning off and trying to snooze before I get to the end.

31 Days of Horror: The Velvet Vampire (1971)

velvet vampire

This extremely low-budget vampire flick from Stephanie Rothman isn’t exactly good, but it does have its charms. A young, hippie couple are invited to spend a few days at a mysterious woman’s isolated desert ranch. Naturally, she turns out to be a hundred-year-old vampire who has more than fun in the sun in mind for the two.

The acting is mostly terrible and the lack of a budget certainly shows, but Celeste Yarness shines as the vampire and there is enough style to keep vampire fans interested. There are a few dream sequences of the young couple making love on a bed sitting out in the lonesome desert and a magic mirror that are worth watching the film for alone.

31 Days of Horror: The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll And Miss Osbourne (1981)

jekyll

I’ve recently watched several adaptations of the Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde story and this is by far the strangest and most interesting, and not just because it is much more explicit in its violence and sex than the other films were even allowed to be.

Director Walerian Borowczyk seems to understand that we all know the story already and he uses that familiarity to flip the table on it. Excepting a short, shocking introduction the entire film takes place in a house, Dr. Jekyll’s house. He’s having a party celebrating his engagement with Miss Osbourne. The cream of society is there. An elderly woman plays piano while a young girl does a ballerina dance.

It is a nice party. Until it isn’t. Udo Kier plays Hyde as an ID unleashed. While the other adaptations I’ve seen merely hint at his sexuality Borowczyk allows him to go all in. That dancing girl? Hyde rapes her to death. He does the same to a man-servant. His giant, red member is exposed as the music does a horror sting. He commits violence with glee. But it is not just Hyde who is unleashed. When he ties up a stodgy Colonel, the old man’s daughter pulls down her top and lifts up her skirt. She literally begs Hyde to have his way with her while her father watches. Somehow by watching Hyde live out his every fantasy she’s able to toss off all the shackles of respectability and repression.

Though Hyde has raped and murdered several people, the men deem it necessary to not only lock the women up in their rooms but to drug them so that they will sleep through the night. Somehow it is better for them to not be frightened by the ordeal than to stay awake and be able to fight for their lives. Victorian mores must be kept up, even when life and death is literally on the line.

The film gives us a very little story. We watch the guests come in and sign the engagement book. They have dinner and there is a sprinkling of conversation about Dr. Jekyll and his theories of transcendental science. There is the dance and then the rest of the film is Hyde unleashing his own brand of hell.

Borowczyk and cinematographer Noël Véry shoot the film with soft lighting and a soft focus giving it a dreamlike (or nightmarish) feel. It is very beautiful looking even when extreme acts of violence are happening. The score is very modern as well, filled with droning sounds that only add to the nightmare.

It is not a film for the faint of heart. It is very strange, and pretty extreme at times. It was fascinating to me to watch it having just seen a few of the older versions of the story which is maybe why I kind of loved it.

31 Days of Horror: Eyes of Laura Mars (1978)

eyes of laura mars

As my silly little Garcia Poster note indicated I watched Eyes of Laura Mars today. It is kind of an American take on the Italian Giallo with Faye Dunaway playing a photographer who suddenly gets visions through a killer’s eyes. The murderes are all of her friends whom she gets to watch get stabbed to death while the deed is happening.

Tommy Lee Jones is the detective solving the case. It is based on a story written by John Carpenter and was directed by the guy who did The Empire Strikes Back. It is full of lush, soft photography of half-naked women (Faye’s specialty is of beautiful women in their underwear murdering handsome men in tuxes). It is all pretty silly and a little trashy and kind of awesome. I’ll have a full review up soon.

31 Days of Horror: Fascination (1979)

fascination movie poster

French director Jean Rollin is somebody whose name I’ve known for years, but whose films I had never sat down and watched until today. He made a lot of movies in his career but is probably best known for a series of erotic vampire films he made in the 1970s. Fascination is probably his best-known movie.

It is about a man who flees from his fellow villainous compatriots with a bag full of stolen gold. He winds up in a creaky, old, castle where he plans to hide out until the cover of darkness. There he meets two beautiful women clad in flowing white gowns.

Though he has a gun and speaks as if he’s willing to use it the women do not seem afraid. They taunt him and speak elliptically about further friends coming that evening and something sinister happening at midnight. The man doesn’t understand but is attracted to them and so he stays.

More women in flowing gowns arrive and they too play games with the man. I’ve already noted that Rollin is known for his erotic vampire films so you can probably guess where this film is going, though it may actually surprise you.

The film uses the castle, and those flowing gowns, to great effects. This is more a mood piece than a particularly violent horror film. It takes its time getting to where it’s going but it is mesmerizing just the same. Well worth a watch if you enjoy gothic horror and beautiful vampires.

31 Days of Horror: Hellbound: Hellraiser II (1988)

hellbound hellraiser 2 poster

I have to admit I’m not a very big fan of the first film in this franchise. As I’ve gotten older my tolerance for gore has lessened. There was a time when I would seek out and watch all of the most violent, most depraved films ever put to celluloid. But that time has passed. I’m much more interested in horror films that tell an interesting story, or that prefer mood and vibe over constant bloodshed.

Hellraiser was all about the copious blood flow and the ripped flesh. I can see the appeal in that, and I still appreciate the effects, but it just didn’t do it for me. Which is probably why I’ve kept putting off watching any of the sequels.

For the first chunk of this film, I was restless. There is a lot of gore, and very little else. I can see the skinless woman and appreciate the detail of the effects and wonder how long it took that poor actress to get into costume, but really I just wanted the film to move on. 

But somewhere in the back end, I started to really enjoy myself. About the time the creature with the snakes for arms with the creepy face-things wielding blades for hands, sprouted a finger that gave us a “come here” gesture I realized I was totally on board. The story is mostly nonsense, but the maze set design is really gnarly and the film isn’t afraid to not be taken seriously. It isn’t jokey, not at all, but moments like the aforementioned finger give the audience a little wind. The filmmakers were clearly having fun creating all of these bizarre, and yes gore-filled images. 

So was I.

The Friday Night Horror Movie: Thirst (2009)

thirst movie poster
My Letterboxd profile says that I watched this movie once before, but I have absolutely no memory of it. I’m about halfway through the film right now and nothing has rung a bell. I don’t know if I just logged it wrong (maybe I watched something else and thought it was this, or just accidentally logged it) or if my memory is just that faulty. But I’m glad I decided to watch it again because I love it so far.

Directed by the always fantastic Park Chan-wook, thirst is a vampire movie, and so much more. It stars Song Kang-ho as a priest who volunteers to take an experimental vaccine for a deadly disease. The trouble is he doesn’t actually have the condition so he also volunteers to get it.

It kills him and then turns him into a vampire. A Catholic priest vampire is such a cool idea that I’m surprised no one has thought of it before. His morals keep him from outright killing people so he finds creative ways to quelch his blood lust (volunteering at a hospital he sucks on the other end of an IV out of a comatose patient for starters).

He meets a woman (played by Kim Ok-vin) who is very unhappy and is also into a bit of masochism. The two form quite a pair and that’s about as far as I’ve gotten into the plot.

Chan-wood injects all of this with his usual visual flair and perverse sense of humor. My wife especially appreciated when a sick man is playing a flute and then vomits up a bucket of blood (I’m just kidding, she just happened to be walking by during that scene and cursed my name for letting her see it, then quickly ran away).

And now I must get back to watching it.

31 Days of Horror: The Haunted Palace (1963)

the haunted palace

In 1960 Roger Corman found great success by adapting an Egar Allen Poe story into the film House of Usher. For the next several years he made a number of other films loosely based on Poe stories. The Haunted Palace takes its name from a Poe poem which can be found in The Fall of the House of Usher but the plot is actually adapted from H.P.Lovecraft’s short story The Case of Charles Dexter Ward, but it has all the hallmarks of Corman’s other Poe adaptations.

Vincent Price stars as Charles Dexter Ward a man who inherits an old castle in Arkham, MA. Upon arrival in the town, he and his wife Anne (Debra Paget in her final film role) are not welcome there. It seems the good Charles’s ancestor was mixed up in witchcraft some hundred years prior. The townspeople back then burned him at the stake, but not before he laid a curse on the town.

The town has been plagued with an abundance of deformities in their children and they believe this is due to the curse. Undeterred, Charles moves into the castle in order to fix it up and sell it. But soon enough he falls under his ancestor’s spell and with the help of a couple of henchmen (including Lon Chaney, Jr.) he begins some good old-fashioned revenge.

I love this stuff. Over the last few years, I’ve become a huge fan of Hammer Horror films and Corman obviously took a page out of their book for this film (and many others). Though it was made on a tiny budget it looks great. The sets are beautiful, and the lighting is gorgeous. Vincent Price is brilliant as ever. The story is a bit ridiculous, but it doesn’t matter because it is so much fun.

31 Days of Horror: The Mummy’s Hand (1940)

the mummys hand
The Mummy (1932) is probably my least favorite of the classic Universal Horror films. Frankly, it is a bit dull and the Mummy doesn’t have nearly enough screen time. But it does contain some great set work and a wonderful performance from Zita Johann. This is probably why I’ve never bothered with any of the sequels…until now

The Mummy’s Hand takes the worst parts of the original and adds in some corny comic relief. Dick Foran and Wallace Ford, doing their best Abbott and Costello impressions play an archeologist and his trusty sidekick, both down on their luck. A broken vase they buy in an open-air market leads them on an expedition funded by a silly magician (Cecil Kellaway) and his daughter (Peggy Moran).

After a lot of plot, they eventually find the Mummy’s tomb. Some high priest or some-such thing feeds the Mummy some tea leaves and puts him under his control. Or something. My attention was waning at this point.

It isn’t a terrible film. The Mummy’s design is good, and some of the comedy is actually pretty funny. It’s just that the film feels so very slight. Its runtime is just 66 minutes and the Mummy doesn’t show up until about 40 minutes in, so there is a lot of filler. It had a tiny budget and pretty much no one involved with the original had anything to do with this sequel, so you can’t blame it for not being amazing.