There were a lot of movies about suburban unrest and the darkness of the suburbs in the mid to late eighties, and one of the most underrated is “The Gate.” I did not see “The Gate” when it originally appeared in theaters (I did see the sequel though!), but I did finally get to see it when it premiered on network TV in the early nineties. Back in the early nineties my family was much too impoverished to get a luxury like cable, so a lot of my time was spent watching network televised movies. The network I always watched was WPIX Channel 11 in New York, and it was once considered “New York’s Movie Station,” allowing me to see a diverse library of movies made between 1980 and 1991.
Tag Archives: Horror
Donnie Darko: Meat Suits and Multiverses
Richard Kelly’s “Donnie Darko” has managed to become somewhat mythical among movie buffs, despite being so widely celebrated. It’s a movie with a fairly simplistic tale about time travel and paradoxes, but also has been interpreted by many people and injected with ideas that fit the general frame work of what “Donnie Darko” is. Some people call it a Christ allegory, some people call it a time travel movie, and Kelly himself has called the movie “Catcher in the Rye” if it were written by Phillip K. Dick. There is a surefire hint of author Phillip K. Dick in the way that our main character Donnie Darko is stuck in this hazy world of suburban conformity and alarming aggression. It seeps in to the desperation to be accepted and act accordingly by just about everyone.
Bloodlands (2017) [FrightFest Glasgow 2017]
An Albanian family with inner turmoil finds itself in the middle of a “blood feud” following a clan reputed to be connected to a mountain witch steals from their business.
Written and directed by Steven Kastrissios, Bloodlands’ story is based in the folklore and traditions of the Balkans with a blood feud creating most of the stress to the characters and conflicts. The film develops as a drama for most of its run time with a few bits and pieces rooted in the horror genre until the epilogue which falls directly and completely in the horror genre. His characters feel rooted in reality while going through hell and back. The family is not perfect, they have issues, they argues, they seem to only by together because they have to or because society says they should at times, which all leads to feeling like a lot of dysfunctional families out there and makes the characters feel real. The father is strong headed while the mother is a gossiper who gets a lot of crap for it. Their kids show interest in leaving their country or at least area which is something most teens/young adults go through. The film shows this family in a true light, with their issues, loving each other warts and all. This family is the root of the film and basically the root of the story in every way possible.
King Kong Lives (1986)
This is the classic love story of a man and a woman falling in lover under weird circumstances. And a pair of apes that also fall in love under odd circumstances. And their heart transplant that bonds them. Okay, so this isn’t a classic love story, but it is the premise for easily the silliest “King Kong” movie ever made. In a movie that was sort of kind of made to be a spoor, but also meant to be taken very seriously, “King Kong Lives” is kind of the movie that killed King Kong until 2005, and proved that this concept was never meant to go beyond the one and done tale of his experience with Fay Wray on the Empire State Building.
Devil in the Dark (2017)
Two brothers, one having left the small town they are from and the other having stayed behind and taken care of their father, reunite for a hiking and hunting trip where they had gone together with their father as kids. As the two of them hike and camp, something is hunting them.
Brain Damage (1988)
Say what you want about Frank Henenlotter, but even when he makes a bad movie, it’s a guarantee you won’t see another movie like it ever again. I am by no means a fan of “Basketcase” but I still have yet to see another movie like it. “Brain Damage” is another movie so far ahead of its time and so surreal that it didn’t stand a chance at being recognized in 1988. It’s too bad too, since the eighties embraced a lot of interesting premises, so “Brain Damage” should have caught on. Thankfully it later garnered a following in the VHS rental market, and it’s a horror comedy that deserves to be embraced by the horror community. It’s short, and simple but absolutely gruesome, and a unique spin on the theme of drug addiction and substance abuse.
Dinosaurs vs. Apes: Hollywood Goes Ape! (1994)
Don Glut is a lover of the golden age of monster movies, and his 1994 documentary explores Hollywood’s fascination with apes. Though “King Kong” popularized the giant ape in film, the idea of giant apes have been around for quite a while and even showed up every so often in silent films. Even by 1994 standards, “Hollywood Goes Ape!” isn’t the most polished documentary, but it does offer a no frills exploration in to ape cinema of all kinds. There are looks at giant ape films like “King Kong” and “Konga,” and odd ball ape movies like “The Ape Man,” and “Superman vs. The Gorilla Gang.”