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: Supernatural
A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984)
“A Nightmare on Elm Street” remains Wes Craven’s master opus, a film that is his most creative and most visually appealing. There aren’t many horror films that dabble in the iconology and symbolism of dreams and end up being truly horrifying, but Wes Craven’s film continues to be something of a crowd pleaser to this day. While it hasn’t aged too well since its initial release (which is the case with all of Craven’s films, I’ve found), it remains one of the most influential films of all time considering its primary character is a dream demon who plays more of a supporting role than taking center stage.
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!
Woman's Intuition (2006)
I continue to be a big fan of Patrick Rea’s for the simple fact that he’s a director that loves to screw with his audience. And when he usually does it it’s not to insult or annoy his audience, it’s to keep us coming back for more. He’s a storyteller with a slew of short films very much in the vein of “Twilight Zone,” and his early short entitled “Woman’s Intuition” is a very good example of Rea screwing with his audience with an ending that’s surprising and clever.
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.
Case 39 (2009)
Floundering in movie purgatory for a few years, “Case 39” is a supernatural thriller that has managed to be not only an indicator of its star status and how far its performers have come, but it’s also a statement that sometimes, just sometimes, studios can be on to something when they shelve or keep movies back in production. Held back for four years only released in the UK and now just being introduced to American theaters (maybe due to Bradley Cooper’s rising star status), “Case 39” is about as horrible a movie as you can imagine. It’s a movie that should have just been given a DVD release instead of a theatrical release as a movie starring Cooper pre-“The Hangover” fame. Hint: During filming he clearly wasn’t a big enough star to live through the whole movie.
Sarah Landon and the Paranormal Hour (2008)
To say the writing behind “Sarah Landon and the Paranormal Hour” is clunky, sloppy, and utterly lazy would be a gross understatement. The movie makes no effort in being at all coherent or fluid and instead just does nothing but make all of the wrong movies when applied to competent writing. Sarah Landon is the heroine of this picture and the best characterization we get from her is during her introduction when she gets in to her car and the director zooms in on her bumper sticker that reads “My Friend was Killed by a Drunk Driver.” Director Lisa Comrie doesn’t even try to giver her some complex characterization, she literally explains her entire story on a bumper sticker! And this is supposed to give us insight on Landon? Why not put another bumper sticker that reads “Sarah Landon: The Main Character”?