A Month of Horror Movies

October's nearly half-over and so far my seasonal diet of almost-daily horror films has consisted largely of mediocre stuff. In past years I try to split my month-of-Halloween viewing between old favorites and movies I haven't seen. So far this year I've focused on recent films I've missed, but it's probably time to thrown in some more favorites, or seek out some more acclaimed films. Here's what I've watched the last couple weeks . . .

The Horde (2009). French film about a team of cops out to avenge the death of a friend, who end up trapped in a building with their enemies. Both groups are soon attacked by the zombies ravaging the city and are made to team up in order to beat the zombies. This one kept me entertained, while offering just about nothing new for the zombie genre (except for inexplicably frequent uses of the word balls (e.g. "She's got no balls," "Where are your balls?" and "Those zombies are trying to eat our balls!").

Maniac Cop III: Badge of Silence (1993). I'd seen the previous two Maniac Cops but hadn't gotten around to this one yet. It's not bad. No Bruce Campbell, no Tom Atkins--but Robert Davi is pretty good. I like how all three films in this series were written by Larry Cohen and directed by William Lustig. Even though it's not a great movie, Maniac Cop III is kinda fun to watch, thanks to the writing and directing talent involved.

The Ward (2010). John Carpenter's new one. It's not very good. Dull, not particularly scary, but with a pretty good performance by Amber Heard. It's a "twist" movie, John Carpenter's first.

The Lost Boys: the Thirst (2010). To be fair, I didn't expect this one to be very good. It isn't. Probably on the same level as the previous Lost Boys direct-to-DVD sequel. These movies feel less like sequels and more like Edgar Frog spinoffs. They could stop making them and that'd be just fine. The Lost Boys (1987) is a great movie, and these low budget DVD jobbies don't even come close to doing it justice.

I took a break from the newer titles to watch Boris Karloff in The Ghoul (1933). It starts out promisingly, with lots of cool fog and creepy sets, but starts to get a little tedious around the halfway mark.

The Cottage (2006). A British movie that blends comedy, action, gangster movies, and, finally, slasher films into a relatively enjoyable genre mash-up. Quite a few funny lines in this one, and some surprisingly graphic gore scenes.


On the complete opposite end of the spectrum is Martyrs (2008), a French-Canadian film that disturbed me more than anything I've seen since a recent viewing of Serbian Film (2010). Like that film, the nauseating scenes of torture and brutal punishment are bearable only because of the strong writing and engaging directing. Still, I probably won't feel the urge to fire it up again any time soon. If you watch it, don't read too much about it beforehand, as any plot summary would pretty much require spoiling some pretty intense moments in the film's first twenty minutes.

The Omen (2006). It's hard to get excited about remakes these days, what with a new one coming out seemingly every month. I love the original Omen (1976) and wasn't particularly excited about this re-do (thus the five years between its release and my viewing it). It sticks surprisingly close to the original story. I haven't seen the Richard Donner film in a few years, but every plot point came back to me as I watched this one. The problem is, it isn't scary. Liev Schreiber does a good job (though he's no Gregory Peck), and the rest of the cast is adequate, but it never hits that creepy note the original did. And the kid isn't particularly scary, which, you know, for a film about a scary kid, that's a somewhat important ingredient.

Last night I checked out Legend of Bloody Jack (2007), which was a bloody goddamn mistake. I don't recall where I heard about this one, I feel like I read about it somewhere, but I wish I hadn't. Boring shot-on-DV, horribly acted pile of junk I knew I'd hate five minutes in. I even thought, "Why finish this? I'll probably fall asleep before the end, it'll kill the rest of my Wednesday night, and I won't remember anything about it in the morning." And that's more or less what happened. I woke up towards the end, backed it up to the last scene I remembered, let it play, still fell asleep before the finale, and this morning didn't care enough to "re-cap" the ending, which is what I usually do if I fall asleep watching something I'm not particularly into.

So far the rest of my viewing material this month has consisted of a few favorites (A Nightmare on Elm Street, Friday the 13th Part VIII: Jason Takes Manhattan, Insidious, and Jason Goes to Hell . . . OK, JGTH isn't exactly a "favorite," but it's one of the Fridays I've seen least, and it's not a terrible way to pass an hour and a half). It looks like I'm going to need to be a little more particular about what I watch the rest of the month.

Looking forward to The Thing remake/prequel/whatever it is . . .