31 Days of Halloween

The first movie I'll look at is Eaten Alive which is most notable for being director Tobe Hooper’s follow-up to The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, though if you’d told me that it was actualy the movie he made before that I’d have believed you because it feels like a regression. However, it has had some influence, in fact one of the very first thing that happens in it is that a john (played by Robert Englund) tells a prostitute that his name is “Buck” and he’s “here to fuck.” So clearly Quentin Tarantino is a fan and I’m pretty sure Ti West’s X also draws some influence form this given that both films involve crazy people who murder the people who stay on their property and occasionally feed them to their pet croc. Specifially this one is about a deranged hotel clerk in Louisiana (or some other bayou state) with a captive Nile Crocodile who murders women who check in out of perverse attraction. It’s said to be inspired by a real serial killer named Joe Ball who was also rumored (though never proven) to have fed some of his victims to a captive gator, but the story was also almost certainly inspired to some degree by Psycho. Ultimately the killer, who often wields a psythe, is the bigger threat than the croc who only appears sporatically and is a very bad puppet effect. And I’ve got to say, this killer is no Leatherface. He’s just sort of a random rather homely redneck played by Neville Brand, who doesn’t give him much in the way of killer charisma or mystique. Making your serial killer character a gross and unlikeable loser is of course a valid approach on paper but this guy isn’t even really all that intimidating or memorable here and that’s a much bigger problem. The film also barters a lot more bluntly in the language of exploitation than The Texas Chainsaw Massacre did, which is maybe saying something given that that movie was about a chainsaw massacre. There’s significantly more gratuitous nudity to be found here and where the low budget in some ways made Texas Chainsaw feal real and kind of primal it just makes this movie look cheap and shoddy. There were maybe a couple moments here where it had a pulse but for the most part I didn’t enjoy it much. Would have liked a lot more crocodile content too.
*1/2 out of Five

Day Three: The Cyclops



Watching B-horror and science-fiction from the 1950s is something of a gamble. Occassionally you'll hit the jackpot with a real classic like The Thing or Invasion of the Body Snatchers. Sometimes the winnings are more modest, your Them!s or The Blobs. And sometimes you crap out. The Cyclops is one of those times. The special effects are laughably bad, and not just for the time. Rather than using miniatures or any forced perspective effects, The Cyclops relies on a matte effect where translucent images of animals or actors are projected onto already shot footage to make figures appear big. The translucent quality of the giants and the lack of meaningful interaction between them and the human characters shatters any illusion pretty quickly. That the one bit of interaction sees our giant cyclops pick up and carry the damsel, only for the background to be dragged along with her, is quite the sight. Knowing director Bert I. Gordon was rushing to shoot the film in mere days when the financing fell-through does make these problems understandable, but it doesn't make them any more fun to watch.

Really though, the biggest issue with The Cyclops is its one of those b-movies where most time is spent watching characters wander around the woods and the California hills and that's always so boring.

D-

Edgar Allen Poe’s Murders in the Rue Morgue is noted as the inspiration for Sherlock Holmes and Hercule Poirot, but also, for its ridiculous twist that “the monkey did it.” As you may imagine, most filmmakers aren’t clamoring to adapt this piece of literature. But this 1932 Universal film took a shot at it. The plot bares little resemblance to Poe’s work and some would argue that it’s actually worse. Bela Lugosi stars as Dr. Mirakle, a mad scientist and carnival sideshow entertainer, who kidnaps women as a potential mate for his ape Erik. Why do they both spell their name with a K? Your guess is as good as mine. Director Robert Florey knew this would be a tough sell, plus the Hays Code proponents weren’t exactly thrilled about an “ape-fucking picture”, so he pulled all the tricks from German Expressionism. It worked! For all its faults, this is a surprisingly fun movie with Bela Lugosi hamming it up. This might not be the most acclaimed Universal film, but it’s a solid studio B-picture.

Exorcist III rocks.

Most people agree that sometime in the 90s Dario Argento started to suck and I’ve been wondering when I’ll get to the tipping point where he started to make mostly bad movies. His 1993 effort Trauma certainly isn’t a major work but I would not say that he’d fully lost it yet. This is notable for being one of the few Argento movies that was filmed in the United States and fully in the English language and also for being the first time he cast his daughter Asia Argento in one of his own films, here she plays a Romanian immigrant for some reason (despite obviously having an Italian accent) whose anorexic and experiencing all sorts of trauma, which is exasperated when her parents are killed by a serial killer who decapitates people with an electronic garrote (something that Ridley Scott’s The Counselor apparently didn’t invent). The movie is essentially one of Argento’s giallos with normal people trying to solve the mystery of who a serial killer we only see the hands and body of as they kills people. Despite her nepo-baby casting I don’t think Asia Argento is a bad presence here and I definitely preferred her to the movie’s bland male lead Christopher Rydell. The film also intro introduces us to Dario’s uh, rather European, attitude about having his daughter do sex and nudity under his direction and given that the character she’s playing here is supposed to be a sixteen year old who gets into a relationship with a guy in his thirties mostly with the film’s approval that’s extra uncomfortable but doesn’t really dominate the proceedings. Really the problem here is just that the movie gets pretty woozy in its second act and runs out of steam. It’s not bad as Italian horror movies go getting there though as Argento’s visual sensibilities are mostly intact even if he sacrifices a little bit of the dream logic and while the electric garrote provides some decent decapitations it’s hardly the best gore that the director has given us.
*** out of Five

Sidenote: This movie was filmed and is presumably set in Minneapolis for some reason (probably tax credits) and seeing an Italian giallo made in my home city around the time I was five or six is an absolute trip. Most trippy of all is that the chiropractor who gets decapitated in the first scene is played by someone who was and is a local actress (who mostly works on the stage) named Isabell O’Connor (née Isabell Monk) who lived in the neighborhood I grew up in and was an acquaintance to my family. She hired me to mow her lawn a few times. I only learned she was in a damn Dario Argento movie recently... was not expecting her to be the first murder victim.

Day Four: The Substance



Perhaps its because the targets of its satire are so familiar and well-worn (shallow L.A., the misogynistic entertainment industry, the harms of cosmetic surgery and anti-aging procedures) that The Substance leans so hard on its aggressive and over-the-type style. Or maybe it's to compensate for the thin screenplay, protagonist Liz Sparkle and her doppelganger lacking any characterization beyond their profession and anxiety about aging and the overall scenario lacking any details to flesh the material out. Whatever the case, the results are incredibly obnoxious, The Substance constantly screaming its empty themes at the audience as its first-draft level plot carries us from one body horror gag to the next. What's so frustrating is that the film does show glimmers of promise. Some of the horror elements are effective, the basic craftsmanship is solid, and Demi Moore deserves praise for her work and for committing to such an extreme genre movie. Unfortunately, actually sitting through the film is something of an ordeal. Shallow, meanspirited, and fundamentally empty.

D+

I tried to do the Nightmare on Elm Street movies a few years ago, I think #4 is about as far as I got before I threw in the towel.  I couldn't tell you one thing about it these days but I don't regret putting the series down.

This confirms you hit your head when you watched Skinamarink.

Speak no evil - 2024

Starts off with pretty solid tension and has a decent first 45 minutes or so build up just doesn't really earn it's turn as the decision making is just beyond awful. The little rat faced husband does absolutely nothing, McAvoy does good work here and I really liked the wife he was terrorizing.

But the terrible decision making on the part of the family makes this one a pretty meh/frustrating last half.

5.5/10