I think we can all agree that the marketing for Parker Finn’s “Smile” has been pretty genius. It’s a movie that has built enough clout to attract an audience that’s been big enough to continue a large swell of even more horror films coming in to theaters. It’s good because now we can start to see more movies as immensely disturbing as “Smile,” one hopes. While it’s often compared to “It Follows,” I’d say “Smile” is more in the vein of “The Babadook.”
Tag Archives: Mystery
BAD MOVIE MONDAY: BLACK CHRISTMAS (2006)
Want to hear something funny? As I was sitting here, getting ready to write this review, I only just this very second realized that “Black Christmas” is a play on words. Specifically, it twists around the cheerful upbeat title of the 1954 movie White Christmas starring Bing Crosby and Danny Kaye. In my usual clueless chimpanzee-like way I had never made this connection even though I must have seen the original Black Christmas thirty times in the last thirty-five years. Anyway, that’s my way of introducing today’s movie. Which is not the original, but instead the 2006 remake starring Katie Cassidy, Michelle Trachtenberg, Mary Elizabeth Winstead, Oliver Hudson, Lacey Chabert, Kristen Cloke, and Andrea Martin. It was directed by Glen Morgan, who was a brilliant writer on The X-Files and a not so brilliant writer on the most recent incarnation of The Twilight Zone.
BAD MOVIE MONDAY: SILENT NIGHT, BLOODY NIGHT (1972)
I would have bet anyone a thousand dollars that 1972’s SILENT NIGHT, BLOODY NIGHT directed by Theodore Gershuny had been renamed to its current title for a home video release around 1984 in order to cash in on the then new Silent Night, Deadly Night, and I would have lost that bet. “The film was given a limited release in the United States under the title Night of the Full Dark Moon through Cannon Films, beginning November 17, 1972. It was subsequently released as Silent Night, Bloody Night in the spring of 1973 and continued to screen under this title through December 1973.”
BAD MOVIE MONDAY: THE STUFF (1985)
Some movies just stay with you forever no matter what. It’s not like you add them to a Top 10 or even a Top 50 list of your favorite movies, but yet you keep stumbling across it. THE STUFF is like that for me. I’ve seen it at least fifty times, probably more than that, but if you were to ask me why I watch it at least once a year I couldn’t really tell you. I didn’t seek it out at the time, I’m not even a big Larry D. Cohen fan. Yet here I am nearly forty years later still enjoying the hell out of this thing. It stars Michael Moriarty, Garrett Morris, Andrea Marcovicci, Paul Sorvino and Scott Bloom, and it was directed and written by Larry D. Cohen. Welcome to BAD MOVIE MONDAY!
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BAD MOVIE MONDAY: MUTILATIONS (1986)
Yes! THIS exactly what I feel BAD MOVIE MONDAY is all about. This is why I spend hours and hours trying to find the craziest and weirdest stuff to show to my friends. MUTILATIONS is a ridiculous and batshit insane movie about a group of college students investigating cattle mutilations and being stalked by an alien. No bad movie is ever more entertaining than one made by people who legitimately yearn to make a good movie but simply don’t have the skills or money to pull it off. This is all of that and more. So much more.
Maigret (2022) [Fantasia 2022]
Commissioner Maigret is called upon to elucidate the murder of a young woman found dead in a park, wearing an expensive evening dress that does not seem to fit with her situation.
Virus :32 (2022)
In the age of COVID there’s a re-emergence of virus horror films (like it or lump it), and “Virus :32” is one of the many that’s unique. It’s unique in that it really wants to be considered a part of the “28 Days Later” canon, even lifting bars from the score track “In the House.” It’s not to say that “Virus :32” is a bad movie. It’s actually a very solid survival horror drama if you’re hungry for a good zombie picture and have nothing else at hand to watch.