#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