Sure, this is a Halloween oriented film that isn’t scary, or creepy, or violent, or even remotely menacing and sure it’s a premise we’ve seen trotted out in “Sabrina The Teenage Witch,” “Twitches,” and “Buffy,” but deep down it’s a true Halloween movie and one you can watch be you a child or an adult looking for a good time, and I manage to come back to it every year because it’s such a fun time to be had for all.
Tag Archives: Comedy
Candy. (2010)
If you’re willing to buy that the beautiful Sage Hall somewhere likely in her early thirties is the mother of a man also in his early thirties, then “Candy” might just tickle your funny bone as something of a creepy and unusual horror short film. The appeal of “Candy” is Hall’s directorial style in which she enlists her experience as a video artist to paint a vivid and often uneasy little portrait of a family celebrating Halloween. Hall plays Candy, the curvaceous but coddling mother to her son who experiences jealousy and resentment when he brings home his girlfriend to get in on the festivities.
Spine Tingler! The William Castle Story (2007)
Back in 2007, I reviewed “Spine Tingler!” for the Slamdance Film Festival, a yearly event that’s much more entertaining and fulfilling than its counterpart Sundance. “Spine Tingler!” is quite possibly one of the best horror documentaries and film documentaries of all time ranking with “The Kid Stays in the Picture” and “The Shark is Still Working” as the account of a Hollywood mogul and his attempts to make filmmaking so much more fun not only for the man behind the camera, but for the folks watching in the audience.
Blood Dolls (1999)
It burns us! It burns us! Ow… just ow! I am a humongous fan of “Puppet Master” and as someone who grew up with early nineties cable where they did nothing but play crappy C grade horror, I basically was spoon fed a diet of Troma, Full Moon, Monstervision, and anything with the title “Marilyn Chambers” as my midnight naughty entertainment and I just flat out enjoyed almost anything I could get my hands on that was bargain basement including “Puppet Master” which is admittedly silly and surreal, but still a lot of fun. Hell, I sat through “Prehysteria” three times!
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Undead (2010)
I was a little hesitant to actually sit down and watch Jordan Galland’s horror comedy since its box describes it as being akin to a Woody Allen film as well as an homage to Shakespeare, because let’s face it, horror fans just don’t care about Shakespeare much. But what I experienced was something of a mixed bag of a horror comedy that is both very intelligent and very entertaining. Not only does the film manage to subtly breakdown famous stage plays and literature of all kinds, but it’s a horror comedy very much in the vein of the eighties comedies in which our hero is an inept schlub who is oblivious to the horror around him until it’s much too late to do anything about it.
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest: Ultimate Collector's Edition (DVD)
Milos Forman’s masterpiece of dramatic filmmaking is a movie that has managed to elude me for literal years. I’ve tried to track down “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest” for ages (it’s been my white whale), and every time it’s been one more of the many classics that was easily out of my grasp for one reason or another. Being given the opportunity to watch the film finally in a touched up widescreen edition with 5.1 surround sound managed to be the experience I’ve been waiting for, and Forman’s master opus is well worth the hype.
Monty Python's Life of Brian (1979)
Monty Python takes no prisoners with what is a movie based around the stupidity, hypocrisy and inherent fallacies of religion, and the entire idea of martyrdom, in which a man named Brian seeking only to gain some sense of importance is suddenly a messiah and god, and only by accident. He has the origins of a normal Biblical figure, but after encountering Romans, mindless followers, moronic praisers, violent apostles, and the like, Brian mid-way discovers that he really never wanted to be anywhere near as important as the boy born in the manger next to him named Jesus.