Final List 2014

Here it is, the list of flicks watched in 2014 as part of my first 90 Days of Horror Movies!

1. Stand by Me (8/1)

2. The Lost Boys (8/1)

3. Sharknado (8/3)
4. Invasion of the Body Snatchers (8/3)
5. Argento's Dracula (8/3)
6. The Worst Witch (8/4)
7. Children of the Corn (8/5)
8. House on Haunted Hill (8/7)
9. The Blair Witch Project (8/8)
10. House of the Devil (8/9)
11. Fright Night (8/10)
12. Creepshow 2 (8/14)

13. Under the Done Season 2 (ongoing)

14. Halloweentown (8/15)

15. The Dark Half (8/15)

16. House (8/16)

17. The Hole (8/16)
18. Scream (8/17)
19. Scream 2 (8/18)
20. Haunter (8/18)

21. Children of the Corn II (8/19)

22. Scream 3 (8/19)

23. Scream 4 (8/19)

24. Scary Movie (8/20)
25. Halloween (8/22)
26. Halloween II (8/22)
27. Halloween III (8/23)
28. Halloween 4 (8/23)
29. Halloween 5 (8/26)
30. Salem's Lot (8/29)
31. Ghostbusters (8/30)
32. Scary Movie 2 (8/31)
33. Teen Wolf (9/3)
34. I Sell the Dead (9/4)
35. A Nightmare on Elm St. (9/5)
36. 28 Days Later (9/7)
37. Pet Semetery (9/8)
38. Dracula (1931) (9/10)
39. Pizza Girl Massacre (9/11)
40. Beetlejuice (9/11)
41. Simpsons Treehouse of Terror (13-15) (9/16)
42. Bubba Ho Tep (9/15)
43. Dawn of the Dead (1978) (9/17)
44. Frankenstein's Army (9/18)
45. A Nightmare on Elm St. 2: Freddy's Revenge (9/15)
46. Ghostbusters 2 (2/21)
47. The Lawnmower Man (9/21)
48. Nightmare on Elm St. 3 (9/22)
49. Nightmare on Elm St 4 (9/22)
50. VHS (9/24)
51. Nightmare on Elm St 5 (9/24)
52. Freddy's Dead (9/25)
53. Texas Chainsaw Massacre (9/27)

54. Simpsons Treehouse of Horror I & II, III, IV, V (9/27-10/7)

55. I Heart You (9/28)

56. Cabin Fever (9/29)

57. Shining (10/1)

58. The Purge (10/2)
59. Hocus Pocus (10/5)
60. Zombex (10/5)
61. Found (10/5)
62. Willow Creek (10/6)
63. American Horror Story: Coven Episodes 1&2 (10/7)
64. American Horror Story: Coven Episodes 3&4 (10/8)
65. Disney's The Dance of the Skeletons and (Fantasia Segment) Night on Bald Mountain (10/9)
66. Peanuts Halloween Special (10/9)
67. Garfield's Halloween Adventure (10/9)
68. Simpson's Treehouse of Horror VI, VII (10/9)
69. American Horror Story: Coven Episodes 5&6 (10/10)
70. American Horror Story: Coven Episodes 7&8 (10/10)

71. AHS: Coven Episodes 9&10 (10/10)

72. AHS: Coven Episodes 11-13 (10/11)

73. The Monster Squad (10/12)

74. Jason X (10/13)

75. Fat Albert's Halloween Special (10/13)

76. Ichabod and Mr. Toad (Sleepy Hollow segment) (10/14)
77. Simpsons Treehouse of Horror XXV (10/19)
78. Evil Dead II (10/22)
79. Blood Night: The Legend of Mary Hatchet (10/22)
80. Cottage Country (10/22)
81. Mr. Boogedy  (10/23)
82. It (10/24)
83. Buffy the Vampire Slayer (10/26)
84. Trick 'R Treat (10/26)
85. World War Z (10/28)
86. An American Werewolf In London (10/28)
87. The Conjuring (10/28)
88. The Purge: Anarchy (10/30)
89. Sinister (10/30)
90. Bram Stoker's Dracula (10/31)
91. Interview with the Vampire (10/31)
92. Freddy Vs. Jason (10/31)

#90 Bram Stoker's Dracula #91&92 Interview with the Vampire and Freddy Vs. Jason

Francis Ford Coppola's Dracula is all I need out of a retelling of the story. It's crazy, sexual, oh so 90s and kind of fun. Anthony Hopkins' Van Helsing is the best thing ever. This flick came out when I was in fifth grade and, since it was kind of based on classic literature, I was allowed to watch it! That made for some awful good steps forward in the development of my young, impressionable brain. Watching it still takes me back.

After that, we watched Interview with the Vampire. I've been wanting to see this flick again for a while. Man, it's kind of slow and wussy. I had forgotten. This flick, and the series of books that it is based on, are as much 'vampires for middle aged women' as Twilight is 'vampires for teenage girls'. Even though I'm not the target audience for this flick, I still think it has some good stuff in it.

Freddy Vs. Jason: We kind of just didn't want the night to end. And I didn't want IwtV to be the last movie on the list. I slept through a fair portion of the plot development in the middle and woke up for the big fight at the end.

Okay, that's it!

#88 The Purge: Anarchy #89 Sinister

The second Purge movie is pretty good. It's another one of the recent rash of action movies parading as horror, but at least it keeps things moving. It is just interesting enough and has just enough political commentary to keep me engaged. Is the very basic idea of this movie kind of stupid? Yes. Is the conversation that it would inspire about human nature and morality just as pointless? Pretty much. At least this one dealt with some real people instead of the upper class yuppie douche bags that we all kind of wanted to die who were the center of the first one. I kind of cared if a couple of these people lived through the night. And that'll do, pig, that'll do.

Then I watched Sinister. Holy slut farts! This movie was actually kind of scary! Ethan Hawke is quietly becoming the king of modern horror. He has taken on vampires, purgers, and now an ancient creepy guy who eats children! The style and tone of this movie, while sadly humorless, actually provides a few intense moments and some of the best jump-scares that I've witnessed on film in quite a while. There is a little bit of overabundance of Hawke wandering around in the dark (doesn't this dude ever turn on a light!), but other than that, I can officially give this sucker a 'thumbs up'. Good times.

#85-87 World War Z, An American Werewolf in London, The Conjuring

World War Z is great if you love Brad Pitt and Zombies. If you can watch Brad Pitt make hard decisions for 2 hours while zombies are trying to kill him, this movie is for you. There really isn't anything else going on in it. It's also not a horror movie. It's an action movie, just like Arnold used to make in the 80s, except now the terrorists have been replaced with the undead.

American Werewolf in London is, simply put, great. The last 5 minutes of this movie are probably the best ever constructed for the horror/comedy genre. This flick toggles from sexy to scary to hilarious at such a rapid rate that sometimes it's hard to keep up.

The Conjuring is a lot better than I remember it being. I was much more engrossed in the style of it all this time around. The first half of the flick actually inspires terror, because it stays true to the source material and within the bound of what is actually possible when dealing with the supernatural. That makes it genuinely freaky. The end kind of pushes everything too far, but what-r-ya-gonna-do, it's a Hollywood movie, not a documentary.

#83 Buffy the Vampire Slayer and #84 Trick 'R Treat

Before there was Avengers and Ultron or even Dollhouse, there was Buffy. And before there was the groundbreaking television show about Buffy, there was this cheesy movie. Joss Whedon has said that this flick didn't turn out as he'd hoped, but it is still fairly good. Rutger Hauer (Hobo with a Shotgun) and Paul Rubens (Pee-Wee Herman) tooling around together as a couple of powerful but silly vampires is reason enough to watch for me. Throw in Oscar winner Hillary Swank (The Next Karate Kid) doing her best valley girl impression, and that guy from Office Space (Trailer Park Boys) as the principal and we've got ourselves a movie!

Trick R Treat pretty much gets better every time I see it. The interweaving stories cover most of the ground that you want explored in a good Halloween yarn. And they do it in, like, an hour and twenty minutes. That sounds like success to me.

#82 It

Another sweet Stephen King adaptation. This one would probably be my favorite if it didn't kind of peeter out in the last 10 minutes. After 3 hours of awesome, this one just ends with a spider. But along the way we get some of the best page to screen transformation that King's horror work has ever had. The nostalgia factor is high, the stars are all television regulars. Then there's Tim Curry's Pennywise the Dancing Clown. This image still haunts a generation of horror fans.

#81 Mr. Boogedy

Bud Bundy, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, the guy in the group who kills himself instead of going back to fight It, and a couple of other people take on a ghost in a cloak in this made for The Wonderful World of Disney classic from the 80s. It's pure kid Halloween fun and gives me all the nostalgic feels. The only way to get it is a bootleg copy that comes complete with tracking problems and the counter from the VCR in the corner of the screen. Fabulous! So, good, for real.

#80 Cottage Country

Wow. Here's another recommendation that paid off. It's a dark little tale about how not to try and cover up a murder. I thought that this flick might run out of steam after the initial violence, but it actually gets into some super dark territory as it explores human nature's overwhelming compulsion for self preservation. It also has some wicked commentary on family life and relationships. Gotta love those Canadians.

#79 Blood Night: The Legend of Mary Hatchet

Caught the first 20 minutes of this flick on HBO last night (free HBO, by the way). I was totally not planning on watching it, but that 20 minutes included a kid killing her mother, a mental institution rape that causes a mental institution baby, who dies, causing a mental institution massacre. Then I turned it off and went to bed.

In the spirit of the marathon, I found it on HBO go, because we never leave a movie behind. So I put it back on and ran straight into 20 minutes of crass teenager banter that passed for 'character development'. That and some of the cinematography are the only real complaints I have about this flick. Sometimes, I think budgetary reasons constricted any real 'shooting style' to 'moving the camera kind of fast'.

Other than that, this one's a keeper. It is everything that one could ask for out of a modern low budget horror flick. The cast is fairly universally solid and very pretty. They are also down to do whatever the script asks of them, which sometimes is a lot. This flick is drenched in blood, boobs, ghosts, killers, entrails, and just enough of me giving a crap about the foolish teens and their guide (the graveyard groundskeeper) to keep watching. It delivers more than most of these flicks, for sure. I mean, when your main killer is a naked ghost chick, you're doing something right.

#78 Evil Dead II

If you haven't seen Evil Dead II or read my thoughts on it in the past, then you probably have no interest in reading about it now. How come none of these movies make a damn lick of sense compared to the other ones? I mean, Army of Darkness is a direct sequel to this flick and it doesn't even make sense in the continuity. And supposedly this is a sequel to the first one, or so says the tagline. But it doesn't make sense either. What up wit dat? I don't know, they're still awesome.

#77 Treehouse of Horror XXV

It seems to me that the in the past few years, The Simpsons have regained their relevance. When the show started, it was a phenomenon. Then, for a while, it was just kind of there. They still had the ratings to continue, nobody died off (until recently), and the cast and crew took a pay cut at one point to keep the show from petering out. But now, as the show closes in on its 30th season of social commentary, all involved seem to be quite aware of the show's growing cultural significance. This has seemed to affect their rededication to producing quality work. This season's opener, the long awaited Family Guy crossover, was riddled with self-awareness, which kind of made it more relevant.

The landmark 25th ToH is no different. In one of the classic ToH episodes, they brilliantly lampooned Kubrick's The Shining. Now, two decades later, there is a Clockwork Orange spoof that goes off on a tangent wherein almost every other Kubrick film of note gets a nod.

Likewise, the final story talks about the possibility of other incarnations of the Simpsons that may occur in the future. Why not, it has happened to the Looney Tunes, Garfield, even the Ninja Turtles. The difference is that the Simpsons have always been controlled and created by a few core people and have never changed formats. Hell, they haven't even changed days of the week in the 2000s.

Basically, what they are starting to imply, and it is totally true, is that the relevance of the Simpsons is the highlighting of relevance in its topics. If you haven't guest starred on, been referenced or made fun of by the Simpsons, your contribution to the last 26 years on earth isn't that significant.

#s 73-76: Monster Squad, Jason X, Fat Albert and Ichabod!

Got Monster Squad out of the way. I love this flick because it is one of a rash of 80s horror that was simultaneously geared towards kids and also inappropriate for them. The Gate is another one that comes to mind. Monster Squad has thrills, chills, action, comedy, and, of course, the Wolfman gets kicked in the nards. It's way better than Van Helsing.

On the 13th we, appropriately watched (technically) a Friday the 13th movie. Jason X is kind of removed from the original series, occurring away from Crystal Lake, after Jason Goes to Hell and not actually being called Friday the 13th, but it actually totally does the series (and the character) justice in ways that a few of the other ones don't. My favorite aspect of this installment is that the fornicating idiots are literally what bring Jason back from the dead.

After that, we watched the Fat Albert Halloween Special (found in its entirety on Youtube). I'd never seen it before. It plays like a really good episode of Scooby Doo. It has less mystery and more hijinks. Totally dug it and I could tell that Witter was having a nostalgic moment.

Then I got to have MY nostalgic moment. The 'Legend of Sleepy Hollow' segment of the Disney film The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad is my favorite Halloween movie of all time; which, if you are keeping score, would put it high in the running for my favorite movie of all time. In terms of movies that I have watched the most times in my life, it is probably getting to be right up there with Robocop, Clerks, and Tombstone. Suggesting that we watch any of these flicks is a fine way to ensure that I will hang out with you for an evening.

#63-72 American Horror Story: Coven & Specials Galore!

So this week I got closer to being caught up to the average of a horror movie a day. A lot of this was thanks to Mandy, who decided to watch American Horror Story with me and applied her binge watching nature to the whole affair. So I broke it up into two episode entries on the list.

This season of American Horror Story is, for obvious reasons, the most female driven. Anyone who thinks that there aren't enough good roles for ladies should look into this, because there are about a dozen award-worthy performances in this season of exceptionally written female characters. Kathy Bates tops the list, as she usually does, as the immortal racist slave of the coven's house. This woman will do anything for her art! I think I can say with some certainty that she is my favorite female actor of all time. Her ability to find quirky, challenging roles and then throw herself into them so completely that it is (literally, sometimes) scary makes me want to cry with joy. Every moment of her bigoted, ignorant, murderous character's journey is 100% believable, even when she is only a severed head who is still too proud to watch Roots. 

And that is a perfect image to sum up this season. In a lot of ways it is far more linear and straightforward than the previous seasons (its general plot is almost right out of a tween book series), but the magic is in the individual moments and the power struggle between the characters. It has its moments of total schmaltz, but that is forgivable because they are usually directly followed by moments of extreme violence.

Other than that, I've peppered in some of the old classic specials to pad my below average movie watching. The most notable are Disney's "Dance of the Skeletons" and the Fantasia Segment for "Night on Bald Mountain." The Fantasia piece is possibly the most frightening bit of animation that Disney ever produced, right next to the tripping scene from Dumbo.

I also watched the old standbys from the Peanuts, Fat Albert and Garfield. I love all of these and have posted about them before. Finally, I watched the Simpsons Treehouse of Horror VI which is, in my opinion, the last of the classic ToHs, ending with Homer being literally dumped into the real world (if there is such a place).

63. American Horror Story: Coven Episodes 1&2 (10/7)

64. American Horror Story: Coven Episodes 3&4 (10/8)

65. Disney's The Dance of the Skeletons and (Fantasia Segment) Night on Bald Mountain (10/9)

66. Peanuts Halloween Special (10/9)

67. Garfield's Halloween Adventure (10/9)

68. Simpson's Treehouse of Horror VI (10/9)

69. American Horror Story: Coven Episodes 5&6 (10/10)

70. American Horror Story: Coven Episodes 7&8 (10/10)

71. AHS: Coven Episodes 9&10 (10/10)

72. AHS: Coven Episodes 11-13 (10/11)

#62 Willow Creek

Have you ever thought to yourself, "Gee I wish that someone would remake 'The Blair Witch Project', only make it about Bigfoot instead of witches. And I also wish that that someone was Bobcat Goldthwait"?

Well, you wish has come true! Willow Creek is, you guessed it, a found footage movie about a couple o' twenty-somethings heading out to the town where the infamous Bigfoot footage was shot. Of course, they encounter tons of backwoods weirdos before isolating themselves in the forest.

I may seem like I'm making fun here, but Willow Creek is actually pretty sweet. Goldthwait's dialogue is snappy enough and the couple is likable enough, and the promise of Bigfoot (which may or may not be an empty promise) is intriguing enough that we stick around long enough to get to the massive single shot of the couple cowering in their tent. It's not a very long wait. The movie is only 80min and the climactic tent scene starts around minute 55. This sequence (which is about 15 minutes) is the high water mark of the flick. It is intense and engrossing. The capper of the movie, where they really get chased, is kind of just the icing on the delicious cake.

#61 Found.

I think that my found gem award this year goes to this movie! This flick is just a super well crafted tale of a young man coming to terms with the troubles he faces. Almost anyone can identify with his struggle with bullies, his friends, his parents, his motivations. The only thing that is different about this story is that our protagonist has a serial killer for a brother.

That's all you need to know about the plot, but pay attention to the writing. It is stellar. Everything grows organically from the actions and motivations of the characters, so that when the peaks are reached, they are all the more horrifying.

The other thing that this flick doesn't do is reach for the horror moments. That alone sets it apart from a lot of horror flicks I've watched lately that feel as though they are just struggling through the dialogue scenes so that they can get to the next kill. Found doesn't have as much violence or gore, but when it arrives, it is more disturbing than your average horror pic.

#60 Zombex

I saw a review on a movie called The Dead 2 that said, "One of the best zombie movies of the year." There are a lot of shitty things about that sentence. One is that there are enough zombie movies being made every year that some qualify as 'one of the best'. Another is that one of those movies would enjoy that review enough to put it on their box. Another is that that same movie couldn't find a review that actually thought it was 'the best' zombie movie of the year.

Anyway, I rented this movie because it has Sid Haig, Malcolm Mcdowell, and Corey Feldman. It is one of the movies that The Dead 2 is probably better than.

#48-#59 Quick Reviews of 12 movies!

48. Nightmare on Elm St. 3- Nancy's back with Larry Fishburne and an Arquette of some kind to battle Freddy for the souls of the last of the Elm Street kids. He kills some, but not all of them. 

49. Nightmare on Elm St 4- Freddy kills the rest of those kids plus a few more. Renny directs and doesn't do a great job.

50. VHS- In an anthology, some pieces are always better than others. The organization of this one is pretty sweet. The first story is probably the best on in this found footage anthology.

51. Nightmare on Elm St 5- Oh man, Freddy kills even more kids and runs amok in an Escher inspired dreamland. Eventually his mom spanks him.

52. Freddy's Dead- So Freddy has killed everybody (including Alice at some point, we assume). Now he tries to kill his daughter in 3D.

53. Texas Chainsaw Massacre- The best. Pretty much a perfect horror movie.

54. Simpsons Treehouse of Horror I & II, III, V- The classics. Make me feel like a kid again.

55. I Heart You- Billy and Devin doing what they do. Probably their best effort to date!

56. Cabin Fever- Skin eating virus kills a bunch of assholes. Hilarity ensues.

57. Shining- See my Stephen King blog.

58. The Purge- Too serious for its own good.

59. Hocus Pocus- Bette Midler's teeth and Sarah Jessica Parker Broderick's boobs. No thanks. Thora Birch is so little!

#46 Ghostbuster 2 and #47 The Lawnmower Man

Since yesterday was both Stephen King and Bill Murray's birthday, we did a double feature. We watched the lesser Ghostbusters movie and one of the oddest SK adaptations from the 90s.

First, Ghostbusters 2. I've never seen what the problem was with this movie. A lot of people don't like this sequel, but I think it's fine. Sure, it's not the first one, which is one of the greatest movies of all time, but what is! It nearly succeeds in recreating all of the fun of the first one. That's all it can really hope for, that magic and chemistery. I would watch this group of actors wash dishes together and although there are parts of this flick that kind of seem like that, it's still better than most movies.

Then we threw on The Lawnmower Man. It's barely a King adaptation, loosely based on a short story of the same name. It does have a lot of essential King elements though. Mean Hicks. Abusive Fathers. A Shitty View of Religion. Smoking. Telekinesis. Plus, it deals with the idea that human consciousness can be accelerated to the point of enlightenment through drugs and digital stimulation. A lot of ideas in this flick have also shown up in stuff like The Matrix and more recently in Lucy, Her, and Transcendence. So, in that way, it's pretty cool. And it has Pierce Brosnan in it.

#45 Nightmare on Elm Street 2: Freddy's Revenge

I actually watched this with Witter last week, but kind of forgot about it. We talked about it some last night and came to the conclusion that this in one of our favorite in the Freddy series. Sure, it's got some (unintentional, I would argue) anti-gay undertones, but for the most part this movie is fun.

This flick has grown on me a lot over the last few years. At one point I would have said that it was my least favorite in the series, but especially watching it with a friend and having a laugh about it, this movie turns into a fun roller coaster ride of real horror moments, goofy spots, and complete weirdness. Plus, it doesn't conform to the Freddy formula. That's pretty cool. There is no group of friends that Freddy rips apart one by one. There is no female heroine. Freddy makes it into the real world because he wants to in this one, he isn't just drug into reality in order to be killed like he is in a couple of the other ones.

And, when Freddy does get into the real world, oh man what a good scene that is!

#44 Frankenstein's Army

This flick is a nice little find in the Instant Netflix queue. Thanks to horror aficionado Scott Phillips for the recommendation.

This bad boy is an odd bird. It is a period piece, set in WWII. We follow a group of Russian soldiers as they patrol the countryside and eventually go looking for some of their comrades who seem to be in trouble. This flick is also a found footage movie. It takes a bit of suspension of disbelief to buy that the (english speaking) Russians would cart around a film camera on all of their misadventures. Also, there is no mention of sound equipment, so that'll bug you a little bit now that I've pointed it out. There are other little historical inconsistencies with the plot and logic of the show, but as the flick progresses, we forgive these problems because, well, the payoff is worth it.

I won't get too far into it because I imagine that most of you haven't yet seen this flick, but, let's just say that the soldiers stumble into a factory of tortured humanity where a descendent of Frankenstein has been funded by the Third Reich to bring their two talents together. He is delivering the goods!

The back half of this movie plays like a first hand document of someone roaming around the best f**king haunted house ever created. The gore is plentiful, the monsters impressive, the dangers many and bloody. Enjoy!

(One note: I think that it is awesome that the Nazis were so unarguably doing evil shit, and we find out more and more weird stuff that they were looking into all the time, that a movie like this actually almost seems conceivable. Boy those Nazis are villains. And when you throw Dr. Frankenstein into the mix, forget about it!)

#43 Dawn of the Dead (1978)

The king of the Zombie movies. There isn't much to be said that hasn't been said already. This movie is groundbreaking, socially relevant, horrific and also a little bit boring. It is also the template that all other epic zombie movies use.

Most of the flick is about how to fortify a mall. We watch the entire arch of our group of characters as they escape from society, overcome their differences, work together to insure their own safety and eventually have all of their plans torn apart not by the flesh eating monsters but by entirely different monsters. The killing and the blood effects are just thrown in there so that we don't stop paying attention.

Also, Tom Savini is king.

#42 Bubba Ho-Tep

Bruce Campbell gets back to his campy horror roots in this flick about a couple of long dead cultural icons battling a 2000 year old mummy to save the residents of a rest home. Campbell plays (fairly convincingly, I might add) an aging Elvis who traded places with an impersonator in order to escape the trappings of fame. Now he's wasting away in a Texas rest home where his only real friend is John F. Kennedy, played by Ossie Davis (yeah, you read that right). 

When the two crazy old geezers realize that there is a mummy sucking the souls of their fellow residents and writing Egyptian graffiti on the bathroom wall, they do the only thing they can: they devise a plan to whip the mummy's ass.

This movie is awesome for a bunch of reasons, but the best one is that it is actually pretty sweet and melancholy, even with all the craziness of the plot. 

#41 Simpson's Treehouse of Horror 13-15

Two out of three of these I've never seen before. I bought the DVDs since last Halloween. These seasons were getting back to the point where the Simpsons were getting good again. Some highlights include a parody of InnerSpace, Professor Fink's dad being voiced by real life inspiration Jerry Lewis and Homer's stint as Death. #14 was also written by John Swartzwelder, a guy who has probably had more to do with The Simpsons being the cultural juggernaut that it is than anyone else who has worked on the show. They don't inspire the old nostalgia that the first few season's specials do, but it is still fun to watch the folks of Springfield get bloody.

#40 Beetlejuice

Another classic from back when Tim Burton had something to offer the world. All the major players in this movie used to be maverick young entertainers who were hungry to make their mark on cinema. Now, they are all old, rich, crusty white people that are so severely out of touch with their fellow man that they don't understand why nobody likes them anymore.  Wynona has fallen on hard times and legal troubles. Alec frequently goes on drunken rampages. Geena let one bomb sink her career and now shoots bows and arrows or some nonsense. Jeffrey got busted for child porn. Tim tries over and over to rehash his former glory by dumping out whatever crap Hollywood thinks would make a good 'Burton Project'. And Keaton just started looking for paychecks but hasn't done quite as well as his replacement in Burton's heart, Mr. Johnny Depp.

Oh well, we'll always have Beetlejuice.

(It does look as though Michael Keaton is looking to return to form in the weird new flick, Birdman, Burton's new project makes me more interested than I've been for one of his movies in a long time. So here's hoping.)

#39 Mystery movie

More info to come.

#38 Dracula (1931)

Oh Bella! You so crazy with those little lights pointing at your eyes!

Man, I have a hard time staying awake during this movie. It IS good, but everything moves in slow motion in it. It's based on a theatrical adaptation of the original Stoker novel and Lugosi actually had to campaign to keep the titular role in this adaptation. He's awesome in it, and totally creates everything that is still associated with the world's most notorious blood sucker. The supporting cast is pretty blahs-ville except for Renfield, who is played by Dwight Fry. Fry also played Fritz (the Igor character) in the original Frankenstein. It's kind of sad that he had just as much to do with some of the most recognizable characters in fiction as some of the other big names but rarely gets remembered. So, here's a shout out to him. I mean, ol' Bella only played Dracula one other time for cryin' out loud!

#36 28 Days Later #37 Pet Semetery

I haven't watched 28 Days Later since it came out. This movie was kind of a turning point in a lot of ways. Its use of digital photography was an experiment in style at the time. The digital cameras were just barely capable of producing images that could compete with film, and Danny Boyle, always the innovator, took a chance to experiment with this low budget zombie movie. What he produced was as close to this generation's Night of the Living Dead as you could imagine. Watching it now, it doesn't look all that different from the dozens of worthless low budget zombie movies that are produced every year now. But it WAS different in that it was the first. It also has a big amount of charm, skill and care put into it that it's frequent imitators fail to capture, new technology or not. Boyle also managed to (digitally) present a deserted London cityscape. No small feat.

The other big advance of this flick is that it isn't really a zombie movie at all. The antagonistic cannibals are not undead. They did not rise from the grave. They are not really looking to feed on the living. They just want to kill everything.They are actually living people suffering from a horrible disease. That aside, this is the first noticeable 'fast moving zombie' movie. This one element was enough to secure 28 its spot in horror movie history and bring back the zombie genre for a new millennium.

Other than that, it's just a zombie movie. It's got all the elements that make a rad zombie flick. Likable characters, social commentary and dirty zombies rippin' people apart and puking blood. That's all ya need!
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After that, Witter and I watched one of our favorites, Pet Semetery. This movie is amazing, but only under the right circumstances. You have to watch it with a like minded bud and just sit back and marvel at all the individual moments that this movie throws at you in order to creep you out. Some of them (the moments) are, indeed, scary. Some wildly miss the mark. Some are downright hilarious while others are kind of brilliant. This flick is so uneven that when it hits one of its genius moments, I am always more impressed than I should be. There are sequences, hell, whole performances in this flick that are just terrible. Then you get to that scene with the dying sister or ol' Gage calling his dad on the phone and you can't help but be amazed.

Plus, Fred Gwynne! Right!? Am I right?! Master of what I have officially dubbed 'The Stephen King Accent'.

#35 A Nightmare on Elm Street

I've seen this movie so many times that I can't even guess at the number. It is one that I have watched almost every year of my adult life. Like Tombstone or Robocop, it will always just be a movie that makes me remember why I love movies. Everything is just so perfect about it. The production design, the performances, the tone, the music, Johnny Depp's hair. Even the cheesy parts are awesome (Freddy's super long arms! What's with that!)

This time I watched it with my dog at about 2am. I watched it with the commentary on. It's kind of cool listening to Carpenter, Saxon, Langenkamp and the DP (who actually had a lot of good stuff to contribute) muse on their contribution to American culture. It's also a little boring. Carpenter discusses the inspiration for the film and the psychological undertones, with an occasional contradiction by Saxon, Langenkamp continually comments on her appearance and how long it took to shoot each scene (and Craven makes fun of her for doing so). The DP (whose name I can't remember and am too lazy to look up) talks about making a movie.

#34 I Sell the Dead

This little period piece about grave robbers in the late 1800s has been on my radar for a while, since it hit the video store shelves a few years ago. Just the names of Ron Perlman and Dominic Monaghan were enough to grab me, and their dialogue scenes are definitely the highlight of this macabre flick.

Otherwise its full of that bland and slow british humor that's all the rage right now. Personally I've never had much use for the style. The Brits spend a little too much time talking about the world and not enough time living in it, at least in their cinema. Each vignette is prefaced by Perlman and Monaghan talking about what's going to happen first. Kind of takes the air out of the scenes. Plus, again, the conversations are actually more interesting than the scenes they are introducing. Some of the action is worthwhile, harkening back to the slapstick zombie fun of Evil Dead 2, and it all ends well. I mean, the ending is worth the slim 85 minute runtime.

#33 Teen Wolf

The original 80s flick starring Michael J. Fox. Not the new TV show. I would be curious to watch that show, but I don't think I'm necessarily the target audience for it.

This flick nearly drips with 80s awesomeness. From the cool best friend tryin' to make a quick buck, to the next door neighbor love interest, to the blond babe who is a total jerk, to all the fun extras, this movie is a product of its times, and its times were cool.


Questions: What the hell happened to Scotty's mom? He seems pretty sensitive about it when her death gets mocked and his dad seemed pretty in love with her. Was her death Werewolf related?


Also, what's the deal with Lewis? That kid is, like, the only one who isn't into the Teen Wolf without a reason. He just seems to generally dislike Scott when he's wolfed out. Everyone else seems to have no problem with the wolf except for the antagonists of the flick. And then there's no payoff. How come Lewis doesn't come up and high five Scott at the end when he wins the big game without the wolf? Why is that character even there?!

And then there's the coach. He's the best. Just a gum chewin', knowledge spoutin' good time. He probably has one of my favorite quotes in all of cinema. I hope I can write a line of dialogue that ever even comes close to this: 

"There are three rules that I live by: never get less than twelve hours sleep, never play cards with a guy who has the same first name as a city, and never get involved with a woman with a tattoo of a dagger on her body. Now you stick to that, and everything else is cream cheese."

#32 Scary Movie 2

You'd think with a cast that included James Woods, Tim Curry and David Cross, this sucker would be out of hand hilarious. Sadly though, most of the screen time in this flick revolves either around degrading Anna Faris' character and Chris Elliott (who I've pretty much never found funny). In fact, is there anyone out there who is super into Chris Elliott? Where's my Cabin Boy fans at?

Anyway, this one is mostly a parody of the House on Haunted Hill/Haunting genre of flicks, which are also pretty hit or miss, so the movie doesn't really amount to much. About the funniest part in the whole thing is when Shawn Wayans' dick pulls the evil clown back under the bed. There are other moments of note, but this parody is much like a lot of the other ones that have come out since, kind of just a once and done, couple of light chuckles throw-away.

#31 Ghostbusters

On the weekend of the 30th Anniversary of its release, and the 30th day of my marathon, the 31st flick I am watching (one to grow on): Ghostbusters. 

Now, we all know what it's about, how awesome it is and how influential it was to us. So I'm just going to list some of my favorite quotes from the flick instead of saying anything about it. I should just print the whole script, but then we'd probably miss out on a lot of Murray's ad libs. So, enjoy:

"Back off, man, I'm a scientist."

"Listen, do you smell something?"

"Hello. I'm Peter. Where are you from... originally? Okay the usual stuff isn't working."

"If the ionization rate is constant for all ectoplasmic entities we could really bust some heads. In a spiritual sense."

"Okay so I'll see you later, huh. Give you a call. I gotta have a shower."

"We're ready to believe you!"

"Type something, will ya? We're paying for this stuff."

"That's the bedroom, but nothing ever happened in there."
"What a crime."

"This magnificent feast here represents the last of the petty cash."
"Slow down, chew your food."

"Suck in the guts guys, we're the Ghostbusters."

"That gotta be some cockroach."
"Bite your head off, man."

"I blame myself."
"So do I."

"We should split up."
"Good idea."
"Yeah, we can do more damage that way."

"He slimmed me."
"That's great!"

"And the flowers are still standing."

"That wasn't such a chore now was it?"

"We came, we saw, we kicked its ass!"

"No job is too big. No fee is too big."

"If there's a steady paycheck involved I'll believe anything you say."

"Tell him about the Twinkie."

"Okay, who brought the dog?"

"I make it a rule, never get involved with possessed people. Actually it's more more of a guideline than a rule."

"There is no Dana, only Zuel."

"You are so kind to take care of that man. Such a humanitarian."
"I don't think he's human."

"Has it ever occurred to you that the reason we've been so busy lately is that the dead HAVE been rising from the grave?"
(Moment of realization.)
"How bout some music?"

"This is it. This is the sign."
"Yeah it's a sign all right, 'going out of business'."

The entire prison cell discussion.

"Yes it's true. This man has no dick."

"Since I've joined these men,  I've seen shit that'll turn you white."

"Dogs and cats,  living together,  mass hysteria!"

"Come on! Let's run some red lights!"

"Gotta run, got a date with a ghost."

"Okay... so... she's a dog."

"Ray, if someone asks you if you're a God, you say YES!"

"Let's show this prehistoric bitch how we do things downtown."

"Sorry Venkman, I'm terrified beyond the capacity for rational thought."

"Does anybody want to interview me?! I'm an eyewitness!"

#30 Salem's Lot (1/3 the way there!)

I am one-third the way to 90 movies in 90 days. I finished up this three hour miniseries just ahead of schedule last night. If I watch a flick today I will really be ahead of the game!

The original Salem's Lot miniseries is actually a pretty awesome King adaptation. Some minor character combining and random (weird) name changes (Floyd Tibbets to Ned? What?) aside, it's pretty faithful to the novel (which I just completed as well. For all of my Stephen King shenanigans, check out Scott Reads Stephen King).

The only huge change from the book to the movie is that director Tobe Hooper (of Texas Chainsaw) saw fit to exchange the more sophisticated head vampire, Barlow, of the novel for a Nosferatu inspired creature. It doesn't bug me that much. The vampires in this flick are fun and most of the rest of the characters are there in some capacity or other. The only one I would have like to see have more screen time is ol' Father Callahan, who is, in my opinion, one of the most important King characters. But his involvement in this flick is limited to a super condensed version of a great speech he gives about the state of the church concerning real evil, and his confrontation with Barlow. Yeah, the only dude who actually stands up to Barlow is limited to about 4 minutes of actual screen time. Then he just disappears (to New York and beyond). 

Other than that, it's all 70s good times and weird animal bones/antlers. The DVD is kind of hard to track down, but I highly recommend it if you can get a copy.

#29 Halloween 5

Here we finally hit the wall in the Halloween series. Even with the misfire of the third installment, this franchise has a great villain, a great hero (Loomis), and a great soundtrack. That's really all you need for a horror franchise, but in this one, it finally gets stale.

After a pretty great setup for more shenanigans by the fourth installment, you'd think that this one would have delivered something more, but the whole affair is kind of bungled. You can tell that there wasn't a whole lot of effort put into this one. Even the little girl, who was transferred Michael's evil at the end of the last installment, is just a weird seizure-having mute through the first half of this one and just a scared, helpless victim in the rest of the flick. They don't really surround her with much help, either. The stereotypical greaser asshole and the clowny guy are both played by guys who look old enough to not need to steal beer anymore. The main female is killed off early and unenthusiastically and immediately replaced with (I assume) a cheaper actress.

The only new plot point in this flick is the 'man in black' whose identity and motives remain a mystery... well, completely. Somehow I don't think that it was some grand scheme to have something pay off in the next installment, but we'll see. The only thing that they used from the set up that 4 offered was the climactic fight at the end of the piece, and in 5 it was just used as the opening action sequence. Lazy.

Oh, well, in the next one at least we get some pre-awesome Paul Rudd.

#25-28 Halloween, Halloween II, Halloween III, Halloween 4

So this is about the last major horror franchise that I've never made it all the way through. Freddy and I have been friends for a long time. I watched all of the Jason movies last year. I've suffered through the Leprechaun movies (even Back2ThaHood). I've seen most of the great Universal flicks and I have plans to watch a few Hammer ones this year as well. So Michael Myers is about the last villain standing.

Halloween, of course, is a classic. It's good in a lot of ways. Carpenter's masterpiece of horror, that basically ushered in the slasher flicks of the 80s, really can't be beat as far as movies about a masked guy that slowly lumbers towards his victims goes. The best thing about the characters in this flick is that you kind of actually believe that they'd fall victim to this heap of stabbing anger. Jamie Lee only gets away because she has an ounce of brains and 10 seconds of warning.

Halloween II is just a sequel. It doesn't really offer anything to the mythos except more proof that Myers simply cannot be killed and that Laurie Strode is actually related to him. This kind of establishes motive, which really just makes the whole thing less scary. In the first flick it seemed like if you were anywhere in Myers' vacinity, you were in trouble. But it turns out that if you're not related to him or a friend of one of his relatives, you're probably okay. Then 'ol Loomis blows himself and Michael all to hell and ends the story forever by killing off the most interesting people in the movies. Forever!

Then they tried Halloween III. Oh lord, what a misfire. The creative team behind the Halloween series, still lead by Carpenter, had the bright idea that they should just do a different, independent Halloween themed movie every year and just call them all Halloween. Their first try at this concept, which might have worked out if they had just started it with the second installment, was a jumbled tale of a mask maker's attempt to kill a generation of trick or treaters with future/stonehenge technology and robot henchmen. And it's called Season of the Witch. (I shit you not, no mention of Myers except for the original Halloween being shown on the TV). This flick has some nice moments but it definitely falls into the late-second-act slump harder than any horror movie I've ever seen. (The first act is interesting as they are setting up characters and the scary situation. Then in the second act, everyone moves really slowly and meanders around trying to figure out what to do for WAY too long, Then the third act finally pics up again and gets to it.) EIGHT MORE DAYS TILL HALLOWEEN... SILLLL-VER SHAMROCK!

Halloween 4 finally gets into new territory for me. From this point on, I haven't seen any of the lesser sequels. I was pretty pleasantly surprised by this one. There are decent characters, including the return of both Myers AND Loomis, and the filmmaking picks up the pace, body count and scope of the situation. The one huge thing that stuck out to me in this flick is what horrible assholes all the people in this small, tragedy stricken town are. They have absolutely zero sympathy for the folks involved with the slaughter that happened in their town only ten years prior, even going so far as to tease a guilt stricken youth about being an orphan and trying to satisfy their own hormones in stead of being wary of the deadly anniversary that is upon them. The only dudes that really try and go above and beyond in order to save some lives are the town drunks, and, of course, that doesn't end well. The end of this flick is actually pretty good AND makes a viewer eager to see the next installment... which I will, very soon.

#22-24 Scream 3, Scream 4 and Scary Movie

So we bowled through the last two Scream movies last night, and I like this franchise. I kind of hope they keep going, getting up to the time traveling installment that is suggested in the Stab series contained within the Scream movies. And while we're on the topic, there is a Stab movie that starts off with one girl straight up stabbing her fellow movie buff. There's a premise that I'd like to see fleshed out. We know the killer right off the bat. How do they make that work?

Any-who, Scream 3 wasn't written by Williamson, and even though I remember very little from it, even having just watched it, in my mind I have the impression that I liked it more than Scream 2. I guess I'm just a bigger fan or Scream goes to Hollywood than Scream goes to College.

Then there's the fourth installment. It still gets the job done. I wonder if they would have gotten more play out of it if they could have given it a slick, you-don't-have-to-have-seen-the-other-movies title like Fast and Furious, or The Final Destination? I guess that The Scream or Screams just didn't work for the filmmakers, so they just went with plain old Scream 4. They probably lost out on a lot of the younger demographic, who just said, "Lame, I have to watch three other movies from way back in the 90s to understand this? I'm going to see FastFive instead. No backstory necessary!"

Then there's Scary Movie. Stealing Scream's working title, this parody from the Wayans brothers keeps the dick and fart jokes and cultural references coming just fast enough to start a franchise of their own. Good for them. I have to admit that it's totally fun watching these movies, and the Wayans Bros. are pretty much the best in the business at making these low brow comedies. Scary Movie actually started the avalanche of new parodies that runs all the way up to this year's Hungover Games! Sweet!

#20 Haunter and #21 Children of the Corn II

Haunter is a pretty well made little horror thriller about the residents of a house that has seen its share of bloodshed trying to catch a killer. I watched it on the recommendation of new pal Sarah, and I'm glad I gave it a go. Abigail Breslin leads the show in a perfect blend of Groundhog Day, American Horror Story and The Others. Also, it has a plot device that revolves around Peter and the Wolf, which has always kind of creeped me out for some reason. I won't reveal too much more, just go watch it. It's on Instant Netflix.

Also, pretty much to counteract the 2010 nostalgia for the 80s and slick cinematography of Haunter, I watched The Children of the Corn II and was ALSO pleasantly surprised. This flick just barely eked it out when it counted, always providing just enough substance (whether it be blood splatter or good old fashioned character development) to keep me interested for 90 minutes (a feat that a few flicks that I've watched this year have failed to do). I'm glad I made a commitment to try and watch more crappy franchises this year. There has to be a reason that these things keep getting made, right?

#18 & 19 Scream and Scream 2

Scream is probably the defining horror movie of my generation. As much as I love to talk about all the 80s horror flicks that molded my youth, they were all around a bit before my time. I mean, A Nightmare on Elm Street came out 2 years after I was born, for cryin' out loud.

But Scream hit theaters when I was a freshman in high school, and perfectly captured the angsty, self doubting, self aware attitude that was gaining so much ground at the time. Every now and then Hollywood lucks out and wins one. Kevin Williamson's screenplay started a bidding war and eventually attracted the biggest name in horror, Wes Craven.

The sharp, slick script and the fun young actors who deliver the dialogue are still fun to watch today. It's crazy to think that this was really the first self-referencial horror movie (sure, there might have been others, but history remembers only one). Bottom line, genre-redifining as it was, Scream is just a good horror movie in general. From the babes to the mystery to the tone and gore of it. Scream just got it done. And that opening scene is, just, moo(*kiss)wah! Perfection. It's still fun imagining going in to see a horror movie staring Drew Barrymore (she was in all the ads and on all the posters) and then... that.

Scream 2 is a sequel. It knows it is and it recaptures all the key elements of the first flick except for the surprise and newness of the whole affair. Annnnnd, whatareyougonnado? It's still a good time. There are more awesome folks added to the cast, including Buffy and Justified. And don't forget Roseanne's sister. Too bad that they had to kill off all of the really great parts of the first flick IN the first flick, leaving only Jaime Kennedy to carry on the fun of the first go-round. That, I guess, was the real magic of the first Scream that doesn't quite translate when the body count starts up again and new people start dying. The magic was that everyone was kind of having a good time in the first movie. Actors, killers, victims, lookers-on. Pretty much everybody but Party of Five. She was the only one who really cared that all kinds of people were getting hacked up. In this flick, it seems like everyone is a little more aware of that and aren't so quick to laugh it off, making this movie super 90s AND completely un90s. Weird.

#17 The Hole

Joe Dante (director of Gremlins) delivers this little chiller that almost turns out awesome. I really like the tone of this flick, because it's almost shot like kids shows are now, so it feels kind of warm and comfortable. Then it hits you with some really creepy moments.

As the story (some kids find a mysterious bottomless hole in their basement and let out their worst fears) progresses, it gets a little wonky. It's like they wanted to keep it simple enough for kids to watch, but then made it too adult and scary. The 'worst fears' swing wildly from a clown puppet to an abusive father. What?

If I was a kid right now, I'd probably love this flick. It has a lot of the feel of some of the old stuff that I used to watch, like the filmmakers wanted kids to see it but they knew that parents wouldn't allow it. Think The Gate meets iCarly.

It is a little slow, but Bruce Dern does show up at one point. So that's cool.

#16 House

There are several movies and a TV show called 'House'. I like the 80s horror movie version and it's not-quite-about-the-same-thing sequel. This almost turned into a franchise except for the ill-fated third installment that had nothing to do with the rest of the series and wasn't even distributed  in America as part of it. Then they made House IV. Weird. Oh, well. The first two are good.

I watch this one almost every year. It's just one of those 80s horror movies that has the essential elements that I need. No-name actor in the lead, so he could die. Television actors as the nosey neighbor and the villain, giving it their all. Ghosts, possessions, monsters in the closet, Vietnam flashbacks, a catchy 80s soundtrack, hot babes, floating garden tools, what more could you possibly ask for?

#15 The Dark Half

You'd think that this one would have turned out better. George Romero adapts Stephen King's last novel written before the writer got sober. Timothy Hutton plays a writer whose psyche is SO split between the angry, booze swilling crazy person and the mild mannered family man that he actually splits into two people. Of course, the drunky version of himself then goes on a killing spree. Also, there's birds flying around in a creepy way.

Again, all of this sounds awesome, but for some reason this movie kind of meanders and plods along. I mean, when Michael Rooker seems bored and calm, you know that nothing is going on. That guy gets excited about everything! Also, I heard that Hutton was a pain in the ass. He kind of looks like it in the movie.

#14 HalloweenTown

I'll be honest, I threw this one on because I was getting a little behind and I just needed a flick that would be over in 85 minutes. I like this movie, but I would never count it among the stuff that I would watch multiple times. It was a made-for-television flick that came along a little late for me to actually be into it. I do love Halloween movies for kids, and you could do worse than the HalloweenTown series. There are definitely some makeup effects and costumes that are pretty stellar. And the writing moves things along and keeps the show on the road. Highlights are Princess Leia's mom (not Natalie Portman) and April O'Neil playing mother and daughter and the skeleton cab driver.

#13 Under the Dome Season 2 (Ongoing)

Under the Dome is a strange beast. The book by Stephen King is a large story that is kind of low on plot and high on King's trademark storytelling. It's all about the power struggle of society. The book merely showcases how quickly things can go awry when people get scared and desperate.

The TV show has taken an odd spin on 'adaptation'. We came to terms early in the first season that this show would not be along the lines of something like Game of Thrones, which sticks relatively close to the source material and seems to be out to satisfy fans. The dome coming down over a town called Chester's Mill and most of the names and basic characters in the novel is about where the inspiration for the show calls it a day. The CBS version of Under the Dome is exactly that: the network television version of a King work, stretched out to try and accommodate multiple seasons. The stakes are lower, with the inhabitants actually finding a way out of the dome this year. The characters are less abrasive, more cookie cutter, less real (I mean, really, how could they include all the rape and killing and drug use of the novel, this ain't HBO), as are the actors playing them. All the folks in front of the camera probably have great head shots, but once their mouths start moving it's kind of weak. 

King has apparently put his stamp of approval on the show. He even wrote the first episode of season 2, which has completely departed from his source novel. I'm not in love with the show, but I've come this far, so I'll probably keep watching, at least through this season (and I wouldn't be surprised if it turned out to be the last). I liked the first season a bit more. This season's highlight was a multiple episode guest spot for Dwight Yoakam, who is delightful, but that now seems to be at an end.

Really, any King adaptation is going to have troubles, because the magic of his work is in all the insights he has into the human psyche, not in the events of whatever story he's telling. And that is a very difficult thing to translate to any other medium, especially when you completely depart from all of that and just use skeletons of the characters and the one uniting factor of the original story, the fact that they are Under the Dome.

#12 Creepshow 2

Here's one of my favorites. The final installment of this anthology of short horrors, penned by Stephen King and George Romero and directed by the cinematographer of Dawn of the Dead, 'The Hitchhiker', scared the goats out of me and my childhood chum, Westin. We ran around saying, "Thanks for the ride, lady!" for days.

Now, I think that I like the cartoon storyline that runs between the stories the best. It even features a mask wearing Tom Savini as the live action version of 'The Creep.'

Nothing stirs up the nostalgia in me like these old horror movies about a time before the digital revolution. There is something fun and creepy about remembering how completely isolated people could be back then.

#11 Fight Night (1985)

This is one of those movies that a lot of folks have a special place in their heart for. It's one of those 80s movies that stands out in people's minds because they saw it at that special time in their development where the cheese, the horror, the effects and the comedy were all new to them. Witter, Mandy and I are not of this club. None of us had ever seen this flick before, and I have to admit, for about the first 45 minutes or so, we were baffled. After a run of mediocre titles, I was stoked to watch a tried and true classic of 80 horror, especially one that I hadn't seen. But man, when Prince Humperdink stated terrorizing Marcy from Married with Children, her boyfriend, a stereotypical 80s nerd and a Van Helsing wannabe, I thought I had been burned again.

But eventually the movie did pick up. About the last 20 minutes are pure gold. There's tons of awesome effects, good physical comedy from the vamp's familiar, and just enough emotion to keep me on board. I won't say that Fright Night is going to become one of my go-to flicks, but I can see how others would cherish it. I'm glad it made the list.

#10 House of the Devil

AGAIN: SPOILERS

I gotta say, and I don't think I'm alone on this, this movie didn't really impress me that much. Stylistically it is great, and I love homage to the great horror flicks of the 70s and 80s as much as the next guy. AND I'm a fan of strong, smart female leads... but even with all that, something has to HAPPEN in order for a movie to be interesting. If you're going to pay tribute to genre horror, you kind of need to try and add something to it, not just copy and paste.

It just seems like Ti West, in an early directorial effort, didn't capture the thing that made all of those horror movies that he was paying tribute to work. It was the slow building of suspense. I wasn't really very worried about ol' what's her name in this flick. I'm glad that there was never a moment when I thought that she made a decision that was totally stupid and would eventually lead to her demise, but those decisions are also the plot devices in most horror movies that lead to the good shit. This movie just didn't ever get to that, the good shit. Mostly it was just a bunch of sequences of characters quietly moving from scene to scene and being in the 80s. 'Oh, I'm alone in the house, here's my walkman (again).' 'Better call for pizza, check out this rotary phone.'

Not for nothin', but if you're going to call your movie House of the Devil, I kind of want to see some devil. You know, have him dancing around in the living room or answer the door all pitch fork-y and the whatnot. Instead, we get an old guy, an old woman, and the chunky guy from all these movies as the villains, and they don't even stand a chance against the girl that they lure into the house... of the devil. She basically whips all their asses, no problem.

Oh, I guess there is one part where a weird old lady (?) creature (?) draws a picture of a pentagram on ol' what's her name's belly, thus impregnating her... with the devil. I kind of almost forgot about that part because I was thinking about something scary. Something else, besides this movie.

Oh, and one last thing: this movie cost a million dollars? A million freaking dollars!? Any movie that costs more than sixty thousand better at least deliver a car chase. Or an explosion. Or, I don't know, maybe, the devil?! In this day and age? Really? A Million dollars? That's what you get for shooting on film, bro? Hope you're happy with how 'authentic' your movie looks, because you sacrificed all of your 'doing something awesome' budget on 'making those girl's hair look like hair looked 30 years ago' and getting the rights to that song. You know, that one song, that one that'll make everybody say, "Oh, yeah, that song is from the 80s" when they should be saying, "Holy Lord! Look at that amazing three hundred thousand dollar, fully animated, life size puppet of the devil voiced by Alan Rickman!"

Oh, man... I need to calm down.

#9 The Blair Witch Project

We (the participants of the 60 Days of Horror) have talked about watching this flick every year, but for some reason we never did. I haven't seen this flick in its entirety since I saw it in the theater in 1999. It scared the bujezzus out of me then. Then, after the movie, as a bonus, I got to see a guy throw up from motion sickness caused by the film.

It's the original. The grandaddy of all found footage movies. And it still gets the job done. I'm glad that I decided to watch it tonight, alone in the dark, on the big TV with the sound cranked. The fact that I am sick right now and may also have a fever probably helped me to get into the experience as well.

I think that the effect of the flick is lost a little bit when it's lo-budget scope is shrunk down for the small screen. The thing that made this movie so effective when it came out was that people were so used to seeing the creature. The subtleties of using the audience's imagination against them had all but disappeared from films in the nineties (now such a technique would be totally unthinkable). But this movie used that as a weapon against its audience. We were glued to every movement and every sound, waiting for the damn thing to pay off. And while we were waiting, we imagined what the witch would look like, we put ourselves in the character's places, we built real, palpable anticipation and worry for these b-movie people. I can't imagine what it would be like to watch this bad boy on some tiny screen with crappy sound, because the thing that made it so intense was that you felt like you shouldn't blink. You might have missed something. Your ears had to be alert in order to catch all the bangs and clacks and screams emanating from the woods.

The fact that we NEVER see the villain or find out what happened to our heroes makes it even more frustrating and satisfying at the same time. We get to take the horror home with us, to be discussed and evaluated.

This flick was truly a product of its time. It couldn't be duplicated now because part of its effectiveness was the ad campaign. Many filmgoers went into the thing thinking that it might be real. So effective was the initial ad campaign, with commercials, fake websites and news articles, that we didn't quite know what to believe, except that we were seeing something new and different in the world of horror. This baby took us back to our roots. It helped a generation of desensitized horror fans remember why we enjoyed these movies in the first place.

#8 The House on Haunted Hill

WARNING: SPOILERS BE HERE

I figured that I'd warn about the spoilers, even though this flick is 55 years old. So if any of you younger folks out there are like me and still hadn't watched it even though it is on instant Netflix, just go watch it before you read this blog. This horror classic is totally worth it and it's only 75 minutes long.

This flick is just a good ol' fashioned murder mystery, with a whole bunch of ghostly activity thrown in for good measure. There's a motley crew of folks that go up to a haunted house for a dinner party and the chance to go home with $10,000 if they can stay in the house the whole night. It's funny how each character plays a specific part in the story, with a few of them just there for effect or to throw the viewer off the trail. The drunk and the columnist are basically just there as fluff, especially ol' drunky-Magee, stirring up a whole bunch of trouble about ghosts. I'd like to see a movie about his first night in the house.

This movie gets everything done right. It's quick and fun, it has a bunch of supernatural scares, and then it wraps everything up just fine. Sure the whole murder plot doesn't quite make total sense, but Vincent Price comes out on top with the ol' puppet skeleton gag, so it's fine.

#7 The Children of the Corn

I'm trying to keep my Stephen King watching to the early stuff, and more specifically, Night Shift stories. This should be pretty easy, because a bunch of the stories in this first collection from King have been adapted into sweet flicks. I'll be reading the book as soon as I finish 'Salem's Lot. The book even makes an appearance in this movie, which is cool and weird.

All I remember about watching this movie when I was a kid was that I thought it was kind of boring. I was much more into it this time around. I guess being an adult and seeing other adults getting chased by kids is a lot more frightening than being a kid and watching kids chase adults. Plus, being able to look up the 'kid' that played Isaac and know that he was 24 when he played that role is mildly off-putting.

Did that make any sense?

I am also looking forward to watching the many sequels that got pumped out over the last 20 years. Was this premise really big enough to warrant that many movies? I guess that they were noteworthy enough to include a mention on the 20th anniversary poster, so I'm interested to have a look.

#6 The Worst Witch

James Bond's wife/Margaery Tyrell's Grandma and Dr. Frank-N-Furter help the chick from The Craft learn how to be a witch.

This made-for-TV movie from the mid 80s is bad in all the right ways to make an 80s kid feel good and nostalgic. The acting is cheesy, the songs half-assed and the special effects harken back to a time when part of the fun of watching movies was using your imagination to fill in some of the more ridiculous shots.

Needless to say, this is one of my and Mandy's favorites. It's a total Harry Potter rip off, except it was made before Harry Potter existed. And Tim Curry's song/dance number as The Grand Wizard is probably the greatest 3 minutes in the history of film. Just sayin'.

#5 Argento's Dracula

What a worthless piece of junk. This flick felt and looked like the BBC tried to remake the Coppola version in 10 days with a budget of $400. I guess I've never seen any of Argento's 'good' movies, but they can't have been good enough for everyone to just look the other way while he cobbled together this mess of a retelling of Stoker's original story. I mean, what was the point? You've got a totally vanilla dude playing Dracula, no addition to the mythology beyond 'Dracula can turn into a giant praying mantis' (yes, you read that correctly), not enough skin or violence to justify anything, and they handled whatever plot they were trying to include as kind of a second thought to overlong, overacted snooze-fest dialogue scenes. I guess maybe just the idea of Dracula in 3D is enough to get a green light, but I did not watch it in 3D and didn't see anything visually that really would have been worth the glasses. Even Rutger Hauer asVan Helsing (for about 20 minutes) couldn't save the thing.

#4 Invasion of the Body Snatchers (70s)

This is kind of a cheat, because I started watching this one last week. I watched the origional on Netflix and then about half of this version on TV. I am glad that I rented it and watched the unedited version to finish it off. There is an amount of stuff that probably got nixed for the TV version. 

This film is worth the price of admission just for Jeff Goldblum, Leonard Nimoy, and Donald Sutherland yelling at each other. I also liked it because it was a faithful re-imagining of the origional, but raised the bar in intensity and visual effects. 

Also, horror flicks from the 70s are a little bit scarier to me because they are filled with people of my parents generation. Seeing those folks in dangerous situations freaks me out because they were the people I went to for comfort as a kid. They were the people that would make everything okay. They were the ones who vanquished closet monsters and ghosts and robbers of all sorts. They were adults. So if they can't beat the body snatchers, what hope do we have?

#3 Sharknado

I never saw this back when it was all the rage, so we threw it on today. Coupled with the rain we've been getting, it's another great pick. I think this movie is proof that all you need to make a watchable movie is some stock footage, a studio to record ADR in and some willing B-list actors standing in front of a green screen.

Also, I'm all about a quantity-over-quality attitude. So, with that standard in mind, this movie is, like, a thousand times better than Jaws. Plus, this flick improved the one flaw of Jaws, which is that even if you're afraid of a shark attack, you can just not go in the water. Not in Sharknado. These bad boys attack from the sky! There's no escape from the millions of sharks (where did they come from? Who cares) who fall from the sky and can only think to eat everything around them!

Plus, John Heard is awesome.

#1 & #2 Stand By Me and The Lost Boys

HERE WE GO!!!!! Let's start this off right with a Corey and Kiefer Double Feature!

#1 Stand by Me: This is the story of four friends finding adventure and danger in their own back yard. They bond, they fight, the fend off dogs and leaches and Kiefer Sutherland and his gang of 'dime store hoods'. It's all in the attempt to find the body of a missing kid. It's also a film that has inspired countless other coming of age stories in the last 30 years. Almost every movie about kids that has been made since Stand by Me owes the flick something. It has countless awesome moments (that I won't spoil here) and fabulous performances from all involved (River Phoenix, Wil Wheaton, Corey Feldman, Jerry O'Connell in the lead; Kiefer and John Cusack playing polar opposites; narrator Richard Dreyfuss slinging the yarn; and that guy with the mutant in his belly from Total Recall as mean ol' dad). The film's simple story coupled with the complications of childhood and growing up make it the memorable tale that it is.

Now, I know what you're saying: "Hey SB, this isn't a horror movie! Even by the loosest of standards! How are you starting off your marathon with this?!"

I understand. My argument goes thusly: 1. It's Stephen King, which makes it eligible in my book, especially because I'm coupling this year's marathon with my King Blog. 2. It's still August, and the middle of summer, which means that I'm not quite ready for movies about a dark and stormy nights. The setting of 'that one all or nothing summer' is really nice to watch in August. 3. It's my blog, I'll watch what I want! : ) 4. We coupled it with...

#2 The Lost Boys: After watching Stand by Me, we had to get down to the real horror movie that featured Kiefer and Feldman. Strangely, these two actors were in two films together within a couple of years of each other and they have, like, zero screen time together. Anyway, if you haven't seen Lost Boys, please do. It is one of the essential horror films of the 80s (possibly even THE horror film of the 80s, which was a big decade for horror), and a rare case of Joel Shoemaker directing a good movie. SAX PLAYER FOREVER.

HERE WE GO! A MONTH EARLY!

I know, I know, it's only August. But give me a break, I've had a ruff year. There are a lot of reasons that I am bumping up my annual horror movie marathon to three full months of frights. The most important reason is because I friggin' want to. Like I said, I had a ruff year, especially online, and I just want to get back to posting silly stuff about movies because, let's be honest, that's what I'm best at. 

Also, I'm working at the video store again, and there are just too many awesome horror flicks to count and I want to get moving already.

Another reason is that I want to make this year's theme 'Franchises and 'ol King'. I'm going to watch a bunch of horror series, and that's going to take a long time, especially with stuff like Halloween or Children of the Corn or Hellraiser. So I want to do that and also have time to watch other new stuff and some of the classics. 

Plus, I'm just ready. This is my favorite time of year and, while I'm still enjoying summer, I just need a good, long, fun Halloween this year. 

I'm also coupling this year's marathon with my Scott Reads Stephen King blog, so I'll definitely be watching a lot more King projects this year. So get ready for that.

So, for all of these reasons and more, I am officially kicking off 90 DAYS OF HORROR MOVIES! or A Quarter Year of Terror, or Scott Wastes Even More Time! 

If you want to join me on this voyage, please do! We can watch flicks together, you can link to your own posts in the comments, we can discuss and argue and generally have a great time counting down the days until Halloween 2014!!

-Scott Bryan

August 2nd 2014 (91 Days until Halloween!)

For more Scott info, visit www.scottbryantheperson.com