Halloween Horror Marathon: Pumpkinhead

poster - PumpkinheadAn unjustly overlooked classic. A strange film that manages to be a creature feature, revenge flick, and supernatural horror picture all in one. My mom’s favorite horror movie. These are all apt descriptions for Pumpkinhead, Stan Winston’s 1988 movie starring Lance Henrickson.

It’s funny — I know I saw this movie over and over when I was younger, but I might as well have never seen it, for as vague as the plot was in my memory. I don’t remember it being as hallucinatory and freaky-looking as it is. There are angles and elements of Pumpkinhead‘s shooting that make it look like Sam Raimi had control of the camera. They contrast nicely with the almost pastoral scenes early on, before everything goes violent and revenge-y.

In addition to the crazy camera movement and light streaming through backlit fog for its nighttime shots, Pumpkinhead looks like Texas Chainsaw Massacre during its daylight scenes. I watched this on a full-screen, untouched DVD from 2000, and it still managed to look frickin’ great, despite the fact that Scream Factory put out a pretty excellent reissue of this on Blu-ray earlier this year. Honestly, though, the grainy, slightly blown-out look of the release I have only lent to the terrifying, awful aspect of everything.
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Halloween Horror Marathon: Bay of Blood (with special guest!)

poster - Twitch of the Death Nerve
Today’s post features special guest commentary from Cinapse’s Liam O’Donnell. He and both do this “watch a shit-ton of horror in October and write about it” thing, and so we’ve decided to team up on a few films this month. His column his entitled “Journal of Fear,” and you should totally read it. He also does a podcast called Cinepunx with Joshua Alvarez, and it’s super-fun. Go listen. On to the film …
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Halloween Horror Marathon: The Amazing Transparent Man

poster - Amazing Transparent Man
It’s especially interesting to think 1960’s The Amazing Transparent Man came out the same year as Psycho. The two films couldn’t be more different, despite both being black and white, low budget scare pictures. Psycho essentially redefined the thriller picture for the next — well, forever, really — and managed to achieve a massive level of discomfort and fear, while not really showing much of anything. In its most famous scene, Hitchcock let the mind create the actual horrific stabbing, while cutting away at the last minute.
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Halloween Horror Marathon: Among Friends

poster - Among Friends
A pretty lo-fi little flick, Among Friends has a nice little grit to it that reminds me of ’80s movies like Happy Birthday to Me or April Fool’s Day. You get a bunch of friends gathered together for a celebration, then shit goes awry. A standard plot, with plenty of opportunity for mistaken identity and jump scare surprises.

The ’80s vibe is augmented with it being a costume bash with crimped hair and pastel tuxes, along with a soundtrack that vibes super new wave. There’s a character named Blane. Kane Hodder plays the limo driver. And, much like the previous movie, 100 Bloody Acres, we have a character tripping — this time, mushrooms. There’s also some other drugs, but to share them would spoil the fun.
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Halloween Horror Marathon: WolfCop

poster - WolfCop30 seconds into WolfCop, and I desperately wish I’d bought the Shooting Guns score One Way Static put out for MondoCon. It’s Sabbath-y blues rock, and it sets the scene for the movie absolutely perfectly. The music, much like the movie, is tongue-in-cheek over the top. It’s a hell of a fun flick. WolfCop is silly enough to keep things light, but bloody enough to make the movie worthy of calling itself a horror film. The transformation our hero Lou Garou undergoes is fucking brutal in and of itself, to say nothing of the first few kills.

There’s something about WolfCop that’s hard to put your finger on. Maybe it’s the way it devotedly follows horror movie tropes — especially those of the the werewolf variety — while winkingly acknowledging them and tweaking them. There’s some showing of the seams here and there — Lou Garou’s werewolf makeup is considerably less detailed for action scenes, and you only get one really great transformation scene, but that only adds to the charm, because once you’ve seen them, your imagination fills in the later gaps.
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Halloween Horror Marathon: Nightmare City (with special guest!)

poster - Nightmare City
Today’s post features special guest commentary from Cinapse’s Liam O’Donnell. He and both do this “watch a shit-ton of horror in October and write about it” thing, and so we’ve decided to team up on a few films this month. His column his entitled “Journal of Fear,” and you should totally read it. He also does a podcast called Cinepunx with Joshua Alvarez, and it’s super-fun. Go listen. On to the film …
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Halloween Horror Marathon: 100 Bloody Acres

poster - 100 Bloody Acres
Big ups to 100 Bloody Acres for starting in media res. You’ve no idea what this man’s name is, much less why this selfsame man is pulling a body from a wrecked lorry. You’ll eventual grow to like every character in this movie, though, whether or not they’re a victim or victimizer, and it’s a testament to directors Colin and Cameron Cairnes that they were able to make even backcountry madmen likeable.

Additionally, the film manages to walk a very fine line between generating unease of a comedic sort, along with unease of the terrifying kind, a deft act which is a difficult thing to do. It’s a natural inclination to giggle when you’re scared, and 100 Bloody Acres milks that for all it’s worth. Tucker & Dale did it, Shaun of the Dead did it … and so many other films fail in that balance, so it was with some trepedation I pressed “play” on this movie.
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Halloween Horror Marathon: “Open House”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PMZp6U2UUFs

So: no time to watch movies this week, much less write about them. Shit got busy (see also: reviewing J. Roddy & the Business’ Bottleneck show and interviewing Paul Collins). However, my buddy Paul and a couple of folks got together and formed a production company called Skreech Productions, and that’s “Open House,” their first short, above.
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Halloween Horror Marathon: The Abominable Dr. Phibes

poster - Abominable Dr Phibes
Vincent Price’s campiest role outside House of Wax also features him in hideously-deformed makeup. In his part as The Abominable Dr. Phibes, Price actually never utters a word on screen, as his voice is instead dubbed in, as a result of his vocal chords having been ruined as part of the same terrible accident that destroyed his face and killed his wife.
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