Halloween Horror Marathon 2013

[Monterey Jack]

I've been sick all week, I'll be back onboard with the scary at that time!

What, again?! Dude, you need to get more vitamin C in your diet or take suppliments or something.

[AndyDursin]

I've been sick all week, I'll be back onboard with the scary at that time!

What, again?! Dude, you need to get more vitamin C in your diet or take suppliments or something.

Joanne got it first and felt the need to pass it onto me. lol. Typical sore throat/cough/fever/sinus congestion deal.

I really don't get sick very much, but this is the 3rd October in a row I've gotten a nasty bug right at the start of the month. And I do workout all the time and take supplements!!

[Paul MacLean]

Get better Andy!

As far as horror movies...I'm finding it difficult to get into the "holiday spirit". I've seen all the good horror movies already, and don't like slasher movies. I can't find anything to watch!

[AndyDursin]

I just watched AFTER EARTH -- does that qualify??

A thousand times yes!!!!!! Lol...so what was your grade? 2/10? 3/10? Or is that too generous???

I stopped watching horror films years ago. They do not appeal to me at all anymore...too negative (I especially don't like films about the demonic) and just not entertaining to me.

THE CONJURING is out next week and it's definitely worth it Michael.

AFTER EARTH...words can't describe how bad it was. Even knowing it was terrible, it managed to disappoint!

[jkholm]

I just watched AFTER EARTH -- does that qualify??

A thousand times yes!!!!!! Lol...so what was your grade? 2/10? 3/10? Or is that too generous???

I stopped watching horror films years ago. They do not appeal to me at all anymore...too negative (I especially don't like films about the demonic) and just not entertaining to me.

THE CONJURING is out next week and it's definitely worth it Michael.

AFTER EARTH...words can't describe how bad it was. Even knowing it was terrible, it managed to disappoint!

Michael, I know where you're coming from regarding "demonic" horror movies, but I've enjoyed some recent supernatural horror films because they take the concept of evil seriously. The characters who believe in the supernatural are often the heroes and do their best to warn the skeptics. In THE CONJURING, the Warrens are identified as Roman Catholics and what's remarkable is that the movie doesn't make fun of them. They act selflessly to help the family victimized by the demons and do so based on their spiritual convictions. In most other movies, they would be the "wacky Christians."

[Monterey Jack]

Dark Shadows (2012): 7/10



This is better than I remembered...funnier and creepier, with gorgeous visuals and a superb soundtrack (both the obligatory Danny Elfman score and a groovy selection of 70's song titles). Burton and Depp are just coasting here on their well-worn visual and performance tics, but at least it's a lot more enjoyable than the dour Alice In Wonderland.

[AndyDursin]

Liked DARK SHADOWS, one of Burton's best efforts in a while really...though it's flawed, it has its quirky and fun moments.

[Monterey Jack]

I just think people wanted to bag on it, being ground to a pulp in-between the obsessed cult fanbase for the TV series (how DARE Burton turn our tacky 70's TV soap into a comedy! ) and the stink left behind by Alice In Wonderland, one of those billion-dollar successes that no one really likes in retrospect (much like the Pirates Of The Caribbean sequels). It is an awfully slight movie, top-heavy with sketchy subplots that either vanish without a trace (Johnny Lee Miller's character) or come out of freaking nowhere ("I'm a werewolf, you got a problem with that...?!"), but it positively oozes Halloween-y atmosphere, it's fairly amusing (once you get into the right mood), and the soundtrack is excellent. I'm glad that Burton is doing something different next time (Big Eyes, with no Johnny Depp or Helena Bonham Carter in the cast! ), but Dark Shadows is still fitfully entertaining.

[Monterey Jack]

Poltergeist (1982): 10/10



Poltergeist II: The Other Side (1986): 6.5/10




What can I say? Poltergeist remains a jewel...a perfectly-modulated symphony of frights, with compelling characterizations, magnificent visual effects and one of Jerry Goldsmith's finest scores. The mildly belated sequel, The Other Side (which I haven't seen since a mid-90's viewing on good ol' VHS), still looks and sounds great thanks to the efforts of Goldsmith and ILM, and boasts a creepy performance by the cadaverous Julian Beck as Reverend Kane (it's no wonder he died of cancer during production...he just looks like Death), but Steven Spielberg's magic touch is sorely missing (Brian Gibson's direction is functional at best), and the fact that they never even address what happened to Dominque Dunne's MIA older sister is just odd (although there was supposedly a scene where JoBeth Williams and Craig T. Nelson acknowledge that she's away "at college" that got cut when Julian Beck died and the producers were left scrambling to find a way to finish the film with its main villain suddenly vanishing halfway through). It's an okay film, but coming off of an indisputable classic, it just feels awfully routine, the slick production values not concealing the dollar signs flashing in everybody's eyes.

[AndyDursin]

when Julian Beck died and the producers were left scrambling to find a way to finish the film with its main villain suddenly vanishing halfway through

The prevailing sentiment is that Beck actually completed his work on the film, and that the only thing that needed to be done was another actor had to come in and loop some ADR lines in post-production. This was what was reported in Cinefatastique, Starlog, basically everywhere for years. The only time I've read anything to contrary is in the Kritzerland POLTERGEIST II notes, where Bruce claims the movie was thrown for a loop because of Beck's death. Unless everyone hasn't been telling the truth since 1986, I doubt that's the case. I've read summations of the original screenplay and the deleted scenes, plus interviews with the writers, and I believe he had finished his primary work. The movie WAS cut down but it wasn't because of Beck or his lack of involvement; the pacing apparently needed to be picked up (most of Geraldine Fitzgerald's scenes as the grandmother were removed I believe).

The bit about Dominique Dunne's passing apparently was in early screenplay drafts and then removed...not sure it was shot. Maybe they felt it was trivializing her death to even mention it in passing, and was best left alone.

BTW, this is a good website with a lot of behind the scenes info, including a conversation with the editors and the guy who ADR'd Beck:

http://www.poltergeistii.poltergeistiii.com/

I like II maybe a little bit more than you MJ but I agree for the most part with your summation -- at least with Grais & Victor returning (they wrote the original with Spielberg), the film retains the FEEL of the original...which is more than you can say for III. OH GOD IS IT BAD

[Monterey Jack]

Even if Beck had finished the majority of his role before dying, the film is still oddly structured, in that Beck's Reverend Kane vanishes abruptly halfway through, leaving the movie with no physical manifestation of the villain. Yeah, the first film didn't have a "villain", per se, but it did such a good job of sketching an outline of "The Beast" via Zelda Rubinstein's superb monologue towards the end of the film backed by the terrifyingly primeval rumbling of Goldsmith's score that it didn't really matter. Here, the woeful climax of the picture has the Freleng family getting sucked into a garish mid-90's screensaver for a crushingly abrupt and disappointing wrap-up. With a better ending, I would have liked the movie a bit more, but the entire film has a sketchy, cut-to-the-bone feeling to it, like MGM knew it was a troubled production and decided they'd make more money if they could get it down to ninety minutes.

[Paul MacLean]

Here, the woeful climax of the picture has the Freleng family getting sucked into a garish mid-90's screensaver for a crushingly abrupt and disappointing wrap-up.

I always thought it was silly to show the whole family floating in "Limbo" while trying to retrieve Caral-Anne, and I agree the look of the sequence was neither imaginative or scary. In contrast, the way the original Poltergeist left the Limbo realm unseen made for an effectively ambiguous mystique.

Poltergeist II also had its share of unintentionally hilarious moments, such as the flying chainsaw, and the "good spirit" flying out of Craig T. Nielson's mouth!

[AndyDursin]

I always thought it was silly to show the whole family floating in "Limbo" while trying to retrieve Caral-Anne, and I agree the look of the sequence was neither imaginative or scary. In contrast, the way the original Poltergeist left the Limbo realm unseen made for an effectively ambiguous mystique.

I was reading the old CFQ article and apparently the original ending was something Richard Edlund fought over with the director. I guess the original finale they shot was "too high brow" (Edlund's words, though they don't really describe it in detail) so they re-did the whole thing to make it more obvious...either way there were a lot of issues inherent in the production, like how most of HR Giger's work was discarded. Gibson was a really strange choice to direct the film, and I think many of the film's problems had to do with his hiring/lack of experience.

Either way, I still enjoy it!

[Monterey Jack]

The Burning (1981): 6.5/10



Better-than-average slasher, with superb gore effects from Tom Savini and several Familiar Faces (Holly Hunter, Fisher Stevens and Jason Alexander with a full head of hair) in their film debuts. Produced and written by Bob & Harvey Weinstein...?!

[Monterey Jack]

Halloween (1978): 10/10



Halloween II (1981): 7/10



Is it worth continuing this series? I mean, how they hell do they explain Michael Myers and Doc Loomis surviving that firey explosion in Part II? Or do they retcon the hell out of it? I keep getting berated at another forum to watch part five for some reason.