It’s not often I see a horror movie with such a paper thin script that it blatantly pads the run time. And even when it pads the run time with filler, it still only amounts to a seventy two minute film. And it’s barely seventy two minutes when you don’t factor in the closing credits, and long opening credits. Filmed on a $150,000 budget, what I imagine happened was director/writer Steven M. Smith wanted to film a movie in the vein of “Saw.” He got a hold of a primo haunted house and decided to build his script around the house. That’s likely why the movie’s entire narrative begins and ends in this haunted house, and nothing ever feels organic.
Tag Archives: Halloween
Dark Harvest (2023)
I admit that I’ve never actually read Norman Partridge’s Halloween horror novel, but I was always very interested in checking it out. Thankfully David Slade adapts it for the big screen and introduces the movie going audience to a small town that’s very heavily steeped in to such a horrifying nightmare of circumstances. Although the movie is thin in exposition and exploration of elements like character, and back story, “Dark Harvest” does manage to squeeze by thanks to its enthusiastic direction by David Slade, ace cinematography by Larry Smith, and excellent flourishes of gore and vicious violence.
The Halloween that Almost Wasn’t (1979)
It’s surprising that “The Halloween that Almost Wasn’t” has managed to become something of a mini-cult classic over the years. It was a TV movie that was almost lost to time, and once reclaimed, has survived thanks to nostalgia. The TV movie was much before my time, so I don’t have any real sentimentality directed toward it. In either case, ”The Halloween That Almost Wasn’t” isn’t the best Halloween special, but it has its heart in the right place, even through the cheesy final scene.
Bugs Bunny’s Howl-O-Skreem Spooktacula (2022)
I usually have a lot of awful to say about modern Looney Tunes, but “Looney Tunes Cartoons” has at least tried to honor the legacy of the Looney Tunes. Say what you want about Warner’s handling of the Looney Tunes library but “Bugs Bunny’s Howl-O-Skreem Spooktacula” really isn’t half bad. It’s actually a pretty decent attempt to conjure up the spirit of the classic Looney Tunes as we remember. It has its finger on the pulse of the comic timing and classic raunch we know and love about the old shorts. It’s funny that Bugs Bunny gets the title of the program since he only has one short in the end of the program, meanwhile Porky has two that he shares with his usual foils.
Black Pumpkin (2018)
I could definitely picture re-watching Ryan McGonagle’s “Black Pumpkin” down the line. If anything it’s so bathed in Halloween ephemera that it’s a decent bit of background sounds for the respective Halloween geek. What holds it back though is that there seems to be so much behind the narrative that we’re not informed on, thus there feels like a big chunk of the intend narrative is either cut out or missing. That’s due to the fact that “Black Pumpkin” is technically a sequel to the 2016 movie “Bloody Bobby,” later-released in 2021 as “The Legend of Fall Creek.”
So, it’s a sequel—kind of. But not really…?
Pumpkins (2018)
Director Maria Lee Metheringham’s “Pumpkins” is a film that would have worked so much better as a short form segment in an anthology horror film. As a feature length film, it falls painfully flat. Everything that needs to be resolved about the narrative is literally resolved in the first half hour. Everything else is merely filler that transforms what could have been an interesting revenge tale in to another slasher film.
Natty Knocks (2023)
With these indie horror films set during the Autumn or Halloween, the filmmakers often tend to forget that Halloween should be a spice, not the main ingredient. Dwight Little who is mostly famed for delivering “Halloween 4” give us a movie that is in essence a Halloween movie. And it’s a Halloween movie with a pale faced villain. But it’s not a movie with a certain pale faced villain because, you know, copyright and all that. What could have been a great Halloween flavored horror movie is essentially just a chore to sit through.