31 Days of Halloween

Wait, are you guys actually watching these movies currently? Or are you just writing about horror movies you've seen previously?

I don't use a hosting site, I link from photos from other websites if that helps.

Aside from four movies I watched early everything I'm posting here will be watched in the month of October.  Can't speak for the others.

I'm not really using any site at the moment.  For my blog I've just been uploading everything to Wordpress.  I think I used imgur for a couple of things like my Avatar picture.  For most of the images in this thread I've mostly just been posting the images Wikipedia is using and hoping they stick.

I'm watching mine at 2 AM, normally when I get off work. I jot notes down and write out the review when I wake up.

You love pressing those buttons.

And now, Doomsday continues his ongoing series of watching horror movies he's never seen before for Halloween......

A Nightmare on Elm Street 4: The Dream Master (1988)



Taking place not long after the events of Nightmare on Elm Street 3, the surviving teens find themselves once again hunted by the now resurrected Freddy Krueger. After easily dispatching the remaining teens thus rendering the third movie pointless, Krueger learns that another innocent girl has inherited the previous heroine's ability to bring people into her dreams. He then stalks her hoping to have her bring other teens into her dreams so he can harvest their souls. Oh yeah, he collects souls now. So now she needs to figure another way to destroy Freddy before he can kill more kids and all that fun stuff.

As I've said many times already, it's dumb that franchises like this, Friday the 13th and Halloween have antagonists who are essentially immortal and often time little or no reason is given why they return. At the end of Nightmare on Elm Street 3, Freddy's bones are buried in consecrated ground which should have sent him to hell for good. Nah, I guess that didn't really work, nevermind the fact that the ghost of Freddy's mom was the one to tell the people to do that. Looks like she was wrong. Anyways, no use going over old ground. The movie itself was actually not too bad, it was fun and dumb without being terribly insulting and actually took just a bit of time to set things up. Krueger actually has lines in this movie and also seems to have a little bit of motivation here. What's funny about these movies though is that Freddy is frequently murdering high school kids but the other students at the high school barely seem to notice. If someone at my high school was brutally murdered they'd shut the place down for a week. The students in these movies go on with an 'aw shucks' kind of attitude, probably because horrible, graphic murder is so commonplace now at this particular high school. Anyways, they manage to stop Freddy by showing him his reflection or something and he vanishes again until the next movie where he'll inexplicably show up out of nowhere. I'll find out next Halloween what methods he'll use to dispatch his next crop of idiot teens.

Next Halloween? It’s just two more movies. Wrap it up.

Sigh...

I should know by now not to think I have you all figured out, or that you seem to enjoy being a contrarian, cause of posts like this.

If you laugh at the cross scene, that's...your business.

New Nightmare is standalone.

She just wanted to get closer to God.

Day Five:


Film Year: 1960
Director: Roger Corman
Starring: Jonathan Haze, Jackie Joseph, Mel Welles, Jack Nicholson
Riff Year: 2009 (previously riffed in 2006)
Riffers: Michael J. Nelson, Kevin Murphy, Bill Corbett
Selected Short: Carnivorous Plants

Carnivorous Plants! Like Wii Boxing, they're one of those things that instantly becomes 1000X less cool the moment you bring it home and try it out. Rather than quickly earning their keep and chomping down on your neighbors annoying labradoodle, your carnivorous plant instead sits on your window sill, vowing that he'll get to work tomorrow. You show off their opening and closing ability to disinterested friends who suddenly realize that Wii Boxing wasn't that bad after all, while your housefly population triples in size and begins to plot a coup. Soon after, the plant dies when you go to visit your grandmother in Sarasota.

Yes, Carnivorous Plants are a big let down. Which is why it's a good thing that the short Carnivorous Plants deals mainly with stock footage of transportation and discussions about mousetraps. We believe the plants do not make an appearance until the short has actually ended. The whole thing is tied together by a narrator who babbles his way towards an irrefutable conclusion: Carnivorous Plants are way cooler in the movies.

Mike, Kevin and Bill declare this their finest Carnivorous Plant-related riffing not containing a character named Seymour Krelborn.

Not curing your insect bloodlust by swatting flies? Well, this short is for you! Where else will you see helpless bugs being trapped and digested for ten straight minutes?

This short was a shoe-in to be paired with this particular movie, given the subject matter. Hell, Rifftrax even did a Little Shop reference in its website description, that’s how obvious it was. Though, I’ll be honest, initially I had it paired up with another movie I’ll be watching in about a week that’s also about killer plants, but when I remembered I was going to do Little Shop of Horrors I knew I had to readjust.

The short is informative, but it feels almost voyeuristic in how it gleefully portrays insects being eaten alive. It’s almost like a weird nature-based snuff film. Mike, Kevin, and Bill never quite pick up on that, instead going for riffs of “HELP ME!” for the hopeless insects and a few bits of food based humor. I’ll be honest and say that the education of the short probably held my attention more than the riffing.

And now our feature presentation...

Fans of shops of horrors will love this nostalgic look back, before the days of the massive chain stores, and big box horror shops. In the old days, horror shopkeepers gave you the personal touch; they knew your name, asked about your kids, were always ready with a smile... before killing you, chopping you up and feeding you to their monstrous plant. Little Shop features a powerhouse performance -- as the diminutive nerd Seymour Krelboin -- by diminutive nerd Jonathan Haze, and as always, the sumptuous cinematography, lavish production values and white knuckle pacing that are the hallmark of director Roger Corman.

Kevin, Mike, and Bill invite you to come inside their little shop of RiffTrax and have a look around.



No, not THAT Little Shop of Horrors. I wish it were, but let’s play the cards we’re dealt. So the answer is no, there will be no songs at all during this entire Rifftrax. And no I won’t post any. Not a single one.*

Decades before the story was reimagined as a hit stage musical and in turn adapted into the remake starring the world’s greatest actor, Rick Moranis, Little Shop of Horrors was a humble little black comedy best known as the film that Roger Corman shot in two days. And if you think that’s an urban myth, sit down and watch it and you’ll definitely say “Yep, this was shot in two days.”

Little Shop of Horrors is the story of Seymour, a klutzy nerd with eyes for flower shop co-worker Audrey. One day he picks up a weird new species of plant, which he names Audrey Junior, and brings it to work for a display to boost business. But in order to sustain the plant he must feed it blood, which sends Seymour on a comical killing spree OF WACKINESS!

Roger Corman, the master of the low budget, had a very vast filmography, of which I’ve only seen a fraction of. Of the films I have seen, Little Shop of Horrors is pretty easily the best. I probably should use that term loosely, but I actually enjoy this movie. It’s goofy and dumb, but there’s something endearingly aloof about it. And even if you didn’t care for it’s humor, hating on it is pretty cruel, because it’s like picking on a handicapped kid.

When I watch this movie through Rifftrax I find my attention bouncing forth between the two, because I’m amused by both. Normally the guys at Rifftrax are down on riffing movies that are meant to be comedies (especially ones that are as overt as this) because it’s hard to save failing comedy, so Little Shop of Horrors is an enigma in their library. I suspect it was forced upon them due to it being a popular public domain film and they try to work with it the best they can. All things considered, they do alright. Sometimes they even underline the comedic moment and make it funnier, while in others they fall in the pitfall of just saying “that’s not funny” in various ways.

Though I’ll say this one is not for Rifftrax novices. They’ve done some more solid work on other Corman features on Mystery Science Theater, such as It Conquered the World and The Undead. I’d suggest those before Little Shop.

*Okay, just one.