A Horror Movie-A-Day-A-Thon Keeps The Doctor Away-A-Thon

Well, as you can see from the lengthy title I've decided to start what will become an annual October tradition for me, the Horror Movie-A-Day-A-Thon Keeps The Doctor Away-A-Thon in which I watch one horror movie a day for the entire month of October. I'm a few days behind, but am slowly catching up. Thus far, my viewing schedule has been as follows-

Monday, October 1st-A Nightmare On Elm Street (1984) Written & Directed by Wes Craven
Stars Heather Langenkamp, Johnny Depp, Robert Englund

Nightmare follows a group of teenagers who are being stalked in their sleep by the vengeful spirit of long-dead child murderer Freddy Krueger. Krueger kills the teenagers in their dreams and they die in real life, so to where can they escape? Dun dun dun.

Robert Englund is always memorable as the darkly comedic Freddy Krueger, and while I like later installments in the Nightmare series better, the original is no slacker. FINAL GRADE: B

Tuesday, October 2nd-Gremlins (1984) Written by Chris Columbus, Directed by Joe Dante
Stars Zach Galligan, Phoebe Cates

In Gremlins, Billy is given a Mogwai for Christmas with three rules-Keep them out of the light, never let them near water and never ever feed them after the midnight. When these rules are broken, Gremlins are born from Billy's new pet and wreak havoc across town on Christmas Eve.

This movie has been a favorite of mine since childhood and one of only three movies that ever frightened me as a child (the other two being Jaws and Alien). It's as funny as it is scary, and really well rounded for a comedy/horror film. Big ups. FINAL GRADE: A

Wednesday, October 3rd-Phantoms (1998) Written by Dean Koontz, Directed by Joe Chappelle
Stars Ben Affleck, Rose McGowan, Peter O' Toole, Liev Schreiber and Joanna Going

Small mountain town besieged by an ancient evil from below...or something. It can turn into water, or octopi or...whatever it wants to, I guess.

Yes, the same Phantoms in which Ben Affleck is the bomb in. However, that's about where the good parts of this movie end. It reminded me very much of John Carpenter's The Thing (which I'll talk about later this month) but only in terms of creature design and none of the story elements that made that movie amazing. I really just stopped caring because the plot was so vague and convoluted and at the end I had more questions than answers. FINAL GRADE: C-

Thursday, October 4th-The Frighteners (1996) Written by Fran Walsh & Peter Jackson, Directed by Peter Jackson
Stars Michael J. Fox, Trini Alvarado, Jeffrey Combs, Jake Busey, Chi McBride

Psychic investigator Frank Bannister has the ability to commune with the dead, and with the aid of a few undead associates he scams the small town of Fairwater. But when Death comes to town, Frank's the only one who can put an end to a series of brutal murders.

If you loved the Lord of the Rings trilogy, you have this movie to thank. If you hated it, you have this movie to blame. After ordering 30+ computers for the CG effects in Frighteners, Jackson needed a huge project to justify the money spent on the computers. Frighteners is as scary as it is funny, and nothing about it feels stagnant or cliche. Michael J. Fox is great as the lead and Jeffrey Combs is overly creepy as FBI Agent Milton Dammers. FINAL GRADE: A+

Friday, October 5th-John Carpenter's The Fog (1980) Written by Debra Hill & John Carpenter, Directed by John Carpenter
Stars Adrienne Barbeau, Jamie Lee Curtis, Janet Leigh, Tom Atkins, Hal Holbrook

On the 100th anniversary of Antonio Bay, a mysterious fog infiltrates the town, bringing with it the ghosts of wronged sailors seeking revenge.

I'm a huge John Carpenter fan, but this is probably one of my least favorite of his pictures solely for the fact that it really only feels like a John Carpenter film for about the first fifteen minutes and the last half hour of the film. Everything in between feels out of place save for one or two moments of horror-filled revelations that advance the story. All in all, a good John Carpenter film but definitely not his best. FINAL GRADE: B-

Saturday, October 6th-House On Haunted Hill (1999) Written by Dick Beebe, Directed by William Malone
Stars Geoffrey Rush, Famke Janssen, Taye Diggs, Peter Gallagher, Ali Larter, Chris Kattan, Jeffrey Combs

Eccentric millionaire and theme park tycoon (played wonderfully by Rush) offers five strangers $1,000,000 to stay overnight in an asylum with a disturbing history.

A remake of a classic horror film. While the remake certainly doesn't reinvent the wheel, Geoffrey Rush (who bears a striking resemblance to Vincent Price in the film) alone is worth the price of admission and the sequence in the creepy chamber thing with Jeffrey Combs is pretty goddamn intense. Nothing new, but definitely some freaky moments that make it worth checking out. FINAL GRADE: B-

Sunday, October 7th-The Wicker Man (2006) Written & Directed by Neil LaBute
Stars Nicolas Cage, Ellen Burstyn, Kate Beahan, Leelee Sobieski

A remake of the 1973 cult classic of the same name, Neil LaBute's remake completely misses the fucking point. The basic plot points are the same (man goes to pagan isle in search of a missing girl, is too conservative/close-minded/stuck up his own ass to give the villagers anything but a shitty attitude and ultimately is sacrificed to the Wicker Man to improve their crops when it is revealed that he was baited into coming to Summer Isle in the first place), but that's where it ends. It's basically 100 minutes of Nicky Copes yelling at and hitting women and freaking out and well, just being Nicolas Cage. The most insulting point, however is when the missing girl runs back into the arms of the villagers and each villager decides to, in roundtable discussion, explain the big conspiracy of how and why Cage was lured to the island. So on top of assuming that his viewers don't want to see a good film, LaBute also assumes that everybody watching is completely fucking stupid and can't put two and two together. This anti-climactic exposition is far worse than any I've ever read in Golden/Silver Age comics where the writers never ever leave anything to the reader's imagination.

This is not a movie. This is a crime against humanity. Save yourself two hours and watch the YouTube highlight reel. Seriously. FINAL GRADE: F+

I'm gonna try to break the weeks in half so it's not as much reading and not as much writing, but that's gonna be the format for the rest of the month. Any real updates will be posted as separate blog entries.

These are the films I'm looking at for the rest of the month-
28 Days Later
30 Days of Night
Alien
Aliens
Army of Darkness
Bubba Ho-Tep
The Crow
Darkman
Dawn of the Dead (1978)
Event Horizon
Evil Dead
Evil Dead II
The Faculty
From Dusk 'Til Dawn
Ghostbusters
Halloween (1978)
Night of the Living Dead (1968)
Ravenous
Shaun of the Dead
Slither

If anybody would care to join me for these, let me know and I'll adjust my viewing schedule as needed. I'm also open to suggestions, because I've still got three or four days I need to cover.