Halloween (2018):

And we end this year's run appropriately with the new Halloween movie. Best movie since the original and it replicated the original atmosphere and horror perfectly, if not without some plot and character issues.

8/10

Carrie (2013): Heard this version wasn't too bad, and honestly I think the same. The characters aren't as obnoxiously jerky as the original and are a tad more likable. Even Margaret was shown to be more caring than the original movie but still a religious fanatic. However, I think the movie went downhill the moment Carrie decided to attack and lock her mother before she leaves. I know in the original she yelled at her, but I think this was excessive. Even during the rampage, Carries was portrayed like a straight up murderer waving her arms at everyone and killing them instead of just staring at them or make many of her kills seems like they were accidental. This just didn't sit well with me. 6.5/10

Saw (2004):

Knowing this franchise is famous for horrific gore and death games, this movie was way tamer than how I thought it was. That doesn't mean it's not suspenseful or not well written. It still holds up.

8/10

The Sixth Sense:

When I first watched it many years ago the only thing I remembered was the opening and nothing else. Watching it now it reminds me a lot of Jacob's Ladder, but that one was way more disturbing

8/10

The Blair Witch Project: You liked it? Great. I didn't. I had zero interest in anything going on and cared little to none about the characters and it's simply boring. And when a horror movie is boring to me then it fails miserably 2/10

Edward Scissorhands:

Yeah, it's another Tim Burton movie in a row, but man is it a very beautiful and emotional one.

9/10

Psycho II:

If it wasn't for Alison's review of the movie from a year ago I may had not been interested to watch it. It's a really good sequel and you would think it'll blow since it's a sequel for such an iconic movie from 20 years ago, but instead of doing a repeat of that one it moved the story further and gave more depth to Norman's character and you feel for him wanting to be normal but everything around him just wouldn't let that happen.

8.5/10

An American Werewolf in London:

Strange that I have seen many types of monster movies, but I think werewolf movies are the least ones I get to see. I think all the werewolf parodies and references everywhere ruined it for me since it's always the same. Guy turns to a werewolf, causes death and havoc, dies by the end. Not much in variety to get from it. The most "creative" werewolf movie I've seen is still Teen Wolf because it put a different spin on the genre.

This movie however, I understand it has fans and I did like the comedy approach here, but I think it needed more akin to Evil Dead style of comedy and go over the top with the concept.

7.5/10

The Invasion - By far the worst of the three adaptations to Body Snatchers I have seen thus far.  Nicole Kidman was perfect though in having to act like an emotionless bot since that is pretty much her MO.  The whole virus aspect was just stupid and beyond gross since it required the aliens to throw up on the people.  Utterly disgusting and unnecessary.  I did find it funny that the lady from the 78 film made a cameo here since the 78 film had the actor from the 50s version in it.  That was a nice nod.  Still, the movie lacked any sort of suspense or thrilling scenes and came off as just mediocrely boring.  A generous 5/10.

The Elephant Man:

Knowing this is a David Lynch movie I was expecting the same kind of movie as Eraserhead, but instead I got one of the saddest movies I've ever seen in my life.

9/10

Invasion of the Body Snatchers 1950s version - This was intriguing though I do prefer the 78 film over it. It was interesting to see some similarities with that film in how everything is executed, though you could tell they couldn't do what they wanted with it at all times due to the stupid censorship laws of the 50s. Still, it was enjoyable even if there were only a couple of suspenseful moments and I like how you could connect this film and the 78 one as being set in the same universe due to that scene of him running into Donald Sutherland's car. I'm going to give this version a 7/10.

Nosferatu the Vampyre:

It's Dracula once again, and they got the names right this time. They used Dracula, Mina, Van Helsing and so on. But it's mostly a bland movie save for the music and cinematography. This Orlok/Dracula didn't feel scary and didn't show much creepiness as the 1922 version.

5/10

Friday the 13th Part 3 - Not a bad follow up, though there's only one likable character to be found here as the movie relies too much on its garbage 3D gimmicks rather than story telling. It does give Jason his iconic mask though and there are a couple of cool death scenes. I give it a 7/10.

Friday the 13th Part 4 - A fantastic follow up that ends up being the best of the franchise thanks to the interesting kills, the good pacing, and it has some of the most interesting characters of the franchise, especially the Jarvis family, the brother to Sandra from 2, and of course, Crispin Glover's dance. A 9/10.

Planet of the Dinosaurs:

The only thing about it is the stopmotion scenes, the rest is worse than a Roger Corman's production. The acting is terrible, the dialogue is laughable, and the overall cheapness of this movie. They even had the balls to kill off the Rhedosaurus. Seriously.

3/10

Close Encounters of the Third Kind:

So from my understandings, this movie revolutionized Aline Encounter movies and influenced the Schi-Fi genre to this day. I can where they're coming from. A lot of moments do seem familiar from other alien encounter movies I've seen, most prominently the humans getting mental links to the aliens.

8/10

Alice, Sweet Alice: Wow, does this movie keeps throwing curve balls at you. I didn't find it overly scary, but the suspense and the psychological atmosphere makes up for it. Again, this movie keeps fooling you in determining what's going on or who the murderer is, but you get surprised on several occasions. 8/10

Friday the 13th Part 2 - This one is actually quite good and I always seem to think some of the things that occur in this film are part of the third one. Of course, its biggest issue is that they barely develop its characters. Hell, half of them are nameless since they don't serve any purpose whatsoever and don't even die. It's a solid sequel even if it isn't necessarily better than its predecessor. Oh, and did we really need a 10 minute recap of the first film when this one is barely 85 minutes long? 8/10.

Zardoz:

I actually forgot why I included this here. And the movie was a confusing mess. The plot is all over the place and it's filled with surreal imagery and faux symbolism you don't really get what they're trying to say.

5/10

The Abominable Dr. Phibes: A bit surreal, but not too surreal to the point of making it its whole identity. Vincent Price was creepy with his makeup, and a bit of creativeness in the theme of murder. 8/10

The Mummy (1959): Maybe I set the bar too high since it's a Hammer movie, but I didn't like it as much as the Universal version.

That one was a heart-filled tragic story and you can feel sorry for Imhotep. This one reduced the mummy to a generic monster and Mehemet Bay wasn't as interesting.

6.5/10

Annabelle Creation - What a load of horse dung this was! I thought this was supposed to be better than the first one, but it was just as boring, albeit better made. The whole plot was so god damn stupid and made little sense. So is Annabelle a girl's soul in a doll or a crazy cult member's soul? Because the first movie show... oh, they managed to find a way to fudge that plotpoint into the film. Well, at least I have to give them some credit there even if it doesn't make a damn lick of sense. Overall, I am so glad I did not waste money or time to see this in the theater as it was barely better than the first one. A 5/10 I guess.

Friday the 13th - It may not be my favorite in the franchise, but it most certainly is the best. 8/10.

The Shining - 10/10

The Valley of Gwangi: Why didn't we have more westerns with dinosaurs? It works really well here! It's a cool movie, but not without its issues. The characters are mostly jerks, the dinosaur models don't look as good as One Million Years BC, and the chromakey gave them inconsistent coloring making them switch between grey and purple in numerous scenes. Still, thumbs-up, and give it a watch. 8/10

One Million Years BC: A Hammer film with Rey Harryhausen effects? Sign me up! This is an excellent remake and yes, it's still historically inaccurate but who cares? It's a movie, right? We can have fun once in a while. 8/10

The Wolf-Man - My third favorite Universal horror film, though it does suffer from some oddities that deal with the transformation of Larry himself. Like how come Bela turned into a full-on wolf but Larry is more of a man-wolf? Also, if they only transform when the moon is full, how come he transforms three nights in a row? Also, in the one scene, he's wearing a wife beater shirt when he transforms, but then when he is outside he is wearing a fully buttoned up shirt? Why the hell would a werewolf care about his clothing? lol Anyway, those stupid minor nitpicks aside, I love this movie, I just wish we got a little more development on his werewolf aspect since that's pretty much reserved for the last 25 minutes of the film. Nevertheless, its very atmospheric, well acted, and well written, which is why it always gets a 9/10.

The Giant Behemoth (1958):

Let's see... a radiated blob mutated to a giant marine dinosaur that spreads radiation where ever it goes. It's more or less a Beast from 20,000 Fathoms copycat mixed with Godzilla when they tried using the electrical towers as a line of defense, but it doesn't reach that level.

The puppet used for the water scenes was mediocre, but the stop-motion clay model used for the rampage scenes was terrible. You can see the seams all over it from the neck to the shoulders, it breaks the illusion of it being a real creature. It was so awful that most of the shots were extreme closeups to its face and the rest was obscured by darkness.

3/10

The Giant Claw: Battleship Count: 11 The movie that was so laughable the director quietly walked out the theater when everybody laughed at the bird. For me it was a snoozefest. Needs a dose of MST3K to catch my attention. 4/10

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The Land Unknown:

Another Lost World plot. of people stranded in an island with dinosaurs. The characters are bland and the effects are terrible, except for the plant. I thought it was okay.

4/10

The Deadly Mantis: Not as interesting as Them!, but the mantis puppet looked good enough. The shot where they use a real mantis to climb the Washington Monument looked awesome. 6/10

Them! (1954):

The codifier of many of insect monster movies and the inspiration for other alien films.

For a B-Movie about giant ants, it was decent and still holds up. The ants models are a little bit fake looking, but far better than what you would see in films of the same era.

7/10

The War of the Worlds (1953):

It was good. The effects still looks great, though there are some dated portions and the ending is a bit confusing.

8/10

Abominable Dr Phibes - Even better than the first time I watched it. If I have any complaints it's really just that it does move at a slow pace, but other than that, it's fantastic. 10/10.

Robot Monster: Ah, yes. The king of B-Movies... it's as stupid and hilarious as they say. 5/10

Dr Terror's House of Horrors - A really enjoyable anthology film that has a Tales from the Crypt feel despite not being Tales from the Crypt. All of the actors do a great job and as I have said before, god damn Donald Sutherland looked like Keifer when he was young (obviously it's the opposite). My favorite story is Voodoo. Overall, a great movie, though it does have a couple slow moving parts. An 8/10.

Also watched the first 3 episodes to Season 2 of Tales from the Crypt. God I love Cutting Cards.

Invaders from Mars (1953):

I expected this to be laughing stock, but this was actually really good.

At first you may think it's a ripoff of Invasion of the Body Snatchers, but this actually three years before it. And for an independent movie of that time, I thought it was well written and well acted.

It stars a child, but his acting was great and the combination of whimsical and horror tone makes me mistake it for a Steven Spielberg movie.

The first half was strong, but when they move in to attack the alien it got slow and clunky.

7/10

The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951):

Another classic Sci-Fi. You can see the commentary of the Cold War in this with the danger of the strangers and security, but it still works to this day. The acting is great and "John Carpenter" Michael Rennie made a convincing performance of an alien who understands Earth's culture yet still doesn't understand everything about it. The remake should be interesting to watch.

9/10

The Omega Man - A good movie despite it not even trying to adapt the book one bit. I don't even know why they bothered to even credit him when it could have just been any post-apocalyptic plot out there. Neverthless, Heston is brillaint in his performance (as he always is) from the quips when he is pretending to be talking to someone to the moments when he flat out admits to be talking to himself. It is a good time, but it does slow down quite a bit in the middle and some parts of the story just don't make a lick of sense. A 7/10.

Also, Simpsons THoH VIII.

Unknown Island (1948):

Another schlock of a dinosaur movie. It's like a combined ripoff of both The Lost World and King Kong. A reporter wants to take pictures of dinosaurs, gathers a crew to take him to mystery island, and they get attacked by awful special effects and rebellious crew that wants to kill the people who hired them, and the captain wants to bring a living dinosaur to mainland (Spoiler Alert: That was too expensive to do so he couldn't do it).

And this movie did King Kong vs Godzilla before King Kong vs Godzilla... except it was Megatherium vs Ceratosaurs

4/10

One Million BC (1940):

Oh, God, now this is a real schlock of a movie! The dinosaurs (if you could call them that) are laughable. Oh sure, put a paper sheet on an alligator and call it a dinosaur. That'll fool everybody, right?! Except for the mammoths, they looked convincing. The monitors are the laziest because they're just monitor lizards without any makeup or prosthetics. But the absolute worse is the Tyrannosaur because it's just a rubber suit and fights the cave men in the same size. They were so cheap they didn't make it look larger than them.

Laughable effects aside, I thought it's an interesting movie. The cave people are not given any dialogue to say and most of the movie it's just them using body language to convey their emotions.

It's still a laughable schlock. It's riffing magnet, so watch it with friends and go MST3K all over it.

5/10

The Mummy (1932): Boris Karloff should've been more famous as Imhotep rather than Frankenstein's monster because he was really amazing and chilling in this role.

It is amazing that this was an original story not based on a previous work in literature, and it was really well done. One of the best Horror-Romance movies I've ever seen.

9/10

The Lost World (1925):

The grand daddy of dinosaur literature and dinosaur movies. I read the novel, or at least a version of the novel (Ladybird edition) so I was already familiar with the basic plot and characters and I am aware of some differences from the movie: Mainly bringing a Brontosaurus instead of a Pterodactyl to London..

It is dialogue heavy up until the expedition, then it turns to mostly dead air with dinosaurs doing stuff in the background that for the most part don't interact with the humans, and the Brontosaurus rampage is reduced to last five minutes of the movie.

The dinosaur effects by Willis O'Brein aren't as great as what we would see later in King Kong, but everybody needs to start with something. The stopmotion is rougher and the models are simpler than in King King.

6.5/10

Finished Tales from the Crypt's first season and watched the theatrical cut to Halloween 6.

Nosferatu:

Silent movies are still the hardest for me to get into because the dialogue is minimum and the music for the most part doesn't match the scenes, and without even any sound effects you need to use your full attention with them. I heard there's a version that fixed some of these issues by having more appropriate music and matching sound effects so I might check that one in the future.

Now, I know this is basically Dracula under a different name and a slightly different plot, but oh boy, Count Orlok can give any Dracula the run of their money because he the scariest looking vampire I've seen. Some would say Orlok looks silly and obviously evil, but Max Schreck's performance and the cinematography can make even the silliest looking things scary as hell. A bit of a shame he's not in it that much.

It got its historical value, but I wouldn't put it as a favorite.

6/10

Let's see, finished Tales from the Crypt Season 7 and started Season 1, watched Halloween 6, Friday the 13th Part 8, and the 1978 version of Invasion of the Body Snatchers.

Watched the first 9 episodes to Tales from the Crypt Season 7 today.

The Witch - Not as good as it was the first time I saw it in theaters, but still a pretty solid movie overall. I love how it shows the mental breakdown of the family while making you wonder if it is indeed being caused by the supernatural or if they are just bringing that aspect upon themselves for being such hateful people. Well, maybe hateful isn't the right term, but they're quite dysfunctional. It feels like a Hammer film from the 70s mixed with the psychological aspects of The Shining. I'm sticking to my 8/10 score

Halloween 4 - 8/10

Halloween 5 - 5/10

Halloween II - Solid sequel despite issues. 8/10.

Cat People - For a movie that is titled Cat People, it was sure as hell missing a lot of cat people in it. It should have been called "An Affair to Remember," oh... wait... Seriously though, after finally having the chance to watch this since buying it back in Dec, it was kind of a let down. I get what they were going for, and there were really good moments in it, such as when the one woman is walking down the dark street that is only lit by the street lights, but for the most part, I found myself bored. It is easily one of the weakest horror films I have seen from that era of Hollywood. I'll give it another chance next Halloween, but for right now, my score is a 6/10 stars.

The Last Man on Earth - A solid Vincent Price film that may be the best iteration of I Am Legend at this point in time. A shame to considering how long the book has been out at this point and how many attempts there have been. 9/10.

Wow, $34 for that DVD? o_O Wait, looks like there is another set with it on there.

Either way, it might make for a good Halloween Month review.

We decided to watch The Fog today.

BTW, I forgot to answer your previous question about doing another Patreon request. I'm assuming you would want it to be The Giant Claw, right? Is that one available on DVD?

We haven't decided what we are going to watch this year yet as we usually play most of it by ear since we own so many horror films. I do know we'll be watching a couple of the Halloweens, especially the original and I have to review the fifth one. Most likely there will be some other Carpenter films involved like The Fog and The Thing, along with The Shining and maybe a Vincent Price film or two.

Of course we will also be watching some Simpsons Treehouse of Horrors and I'll get through as many Tales from the Crypt episodes as I can. I just need to figure out where I left off last year.