One week left till the season. How prepared are you? Once again, I'm picking some random movies I never saw including the Creature from the Black Lagoon movies, 1953 House of Wax, The Blob, Candyman, House of 1000 Corpses, to some modern horror like Get Out and A Quite Place. Also in the plan is the upcoming The Addams Family movie which of course totally look forward to it because I love The Addams Family.
Other than Tales from the Crypt and some Halloween movies, I'm not sure what I have in the cards for this year right now. I know I'm going to be moving through as many Ultra Q episodes as I can when the BD comes out in hopes of having that reviewed for my Halloween Month series.
I'll probably pick up the new BD/4K release of The Shining and watch that to get ready for Doctor Sleep (which I wish came out in Oct and not Nov).
And I've already started with both Halloween H20 and Resurrection.
House of Wax (1953):
As a museum lover I couldn't help but love it. It embraces the paranoia you get when you see real-life statues or stuffed animals and expect them to jump to life right in front of you.
Of course, Vincent Price is still amazing (has he ever made bad movies?) and the movie had a surprising amount of humor you almost forget you're watching a horror movie. Mostly dark humor in the house, but still gave me a laugh.
8/10
Creature from the Black Lagoon:
First time seeing any of the Gillman movies, and this one was... okay for what it gave. Maybe I expected more, but didn't see what made it so special other than the creature itself. Beautifully shot, good music, but the plot was lackluster. 6.5/10
BLASPHEMY!!!!
@Creativity By Design I don't know. It just didn't click with me.
Watched Christine last night. Great movie. 9/10.
Revenge of the Creature:
I heard the sequels were bad, but I actually liked this more than the first one. In fact, this is what I was waiting to see in the first one but all it did was trying to catch the creature until the last moment they changed their mind and let it free/leaving it to die.
The characters are really likable and you get to sympathize with the creature who got subjected to endless experiments. The suit wasn't as good as the original one though. There were shots where the right eye was off and in others you can see the paint is missing from the suit and in one scene air bubbles were clearly shooting from the hole on the top of its head.
8/10
The Creature Walks Among Us: Yeah, this wasn't good. Not only they rehashed the previous two movies in one, but they also changed the creature in this stupid looking costume and turned it to a Frankenstein's monster clone. 4/10
I hate this movie immensely. It's utterly boring and rehashes previous footage.
The Shape of Water: It was intended to be a remake of Creature From the Black Lagoon, so I thought I'll watch it now while the original movies are still fresh in my mind. So the movie is infamous for the inter-species romance between Eliza and the Amphibian Man, and I agree, it was a little off-putting. The rest of the movie however was solid though. 8/10
The Blob (1958):
Heard about this classic a lot, and it still holds up, except for the fact Steve McQueen looks way too old for what's supposed to be a teenager. The suspense is great and the monster effect still holds up for what is basically a ball of slime.
8/10
The Omen 1976 - I saw the remake many years ago and thought it was long and utterly boring. This version was long and only slightly boring. There are some interesting ideas going on in this film but the thing comes to a screeching halt for a good 20 or so minutes before it picks up again around the time the main dude and David Warner head to Rome. There are some elements I did enjoy, however, overall, it was pretty meh. The soundtrack was great though. 7/10
Also have been watching the 80s Twilight Zone series and kicked off Tales from the Crypt Season 4.
Sorry you had to start with the remake
The Blob (1988):
Production value is vastly superior to the original and the monster is far more menacing, but I think I prefer the original's B-Movie camp feel. I didn't like the main character that much, I didn't like how the blob looked like it tried to copy John Carpenter's The Thing, and I didn't like it being reduced from a wild space monster to an Earth-made biological weapon.
7/10
I think the original is far superior, but this wasn't a bad remake.
The Lost World (1960): My God was this an embarrassment. This was made in the 60s and the best thing they could come up with are lizards with prosthetics like it's 1940s One Million BC? They couldn't do puppets or stop-motion or anything resembling "dinosaurs"? And Since this movie used real animals it forced real animals to fight and kill each other for real which should never be okay in any time. And it's a shame because the actors were really good but they had to be in such insultingly cheap production like this. 3/10
The Haunting (1963):
Very atmospheric and and it's done with just specific and weird shots at random objects accompanied by good sound engineering to give the impression of a haunted house.
8.5/10
This one is on my list of movies to eventually watch as I've only seen the remake.
The Stone Tape: This was recommended to me for watching, and it's good. It's made for TV and so it looks like I'm watching a Doctor Who episode complete with dodgy special effects and hammy acting, but without the Doctor. Now if you're scared of loud noises, this will certainly scare you because the screams are many. It's a different kind of Haunted House story as everyone is in the same place but only select few at random can hear or see the ghost, so it makes for an interesting character dynamic, and it's going by science instead of the supernatural. 7.5/10
Stephen King's It:
So for a long time, the impression I had on this movie was based on the Nostalgia Critic review and thanks to that I thought this was nothing but a horror movie that's too silly to take seriously.
Ignoring the differences from the book and the new movies, this was kinda, sorta okay. The scares are lacking, but the build up scenes are still well done. Pennywise is scarier when it's just his voice, but when he's on screen he's more annoying than scary. The only scene I thought was remotely scary was Pennywise's cemetery moment when he asked Bill to pick his grave, but that's it. The adults are wooden so their reactions are also wooden. And the ending was pathetic. So all what they had to do was just shove Pennywise aside and beat him up with their hands until they reach his heart? It makes all the talk about facing their fears kinda pointless when simple punches were the answer all along.
6/10
Yeah, I was not a fan of this adaptation at all. There are some cool moments, but they are far and few between. Like they totally skipped on the second most important death in this version, which was Adrian. He is the whole reason Mike calls the others in the first place.
Child's Play 2019 - Well, at least it wasn't as bad as the remake to Nightmare on Elm Street, that's something, right? Seriously though, this was complete and utter shit. It was cliche, it didn't feature a single likable character, there was not a single sense of pacing, but most of all, it was utterly boring. The movie didn't even try to do anything original at all. Not to mention it totally wasted Mark Hamill, but I bet he loved the paycheck they gave him for this shit. Also, who the hell in the real world would also want to own a doll that looked like that? It looked like someone immortalized the face of a pedophile in doll form. Like seriously, that shit looked creepy. No kid would want anything to do with that. Jesus fucking christ this sucked and I'm not even that big of a fan of the original. I'm giving this shit fest a 2/10 because there were two funny moments in the movie.
Gremlins + Gremlins 2: The New Batch:
I saw the first Gremlins years ago and it's still as good as I remember. Gremlins 2 on the other hand, this is a weird one. Yeah, they were going for more comedy with this but it was just too jarring. When it acts like a proper sequel and takes itself seriously it works, but when it's doing random 4th wall breaking jokes or just being overtly cartoony it doesn't work to me.
Gremlins: 8/10
Gremlins 2: 5/10
Soylent Green:
I heard this reference a lot and it gave me the impression the movie is a cannibal horror movie, but I got a dystopian feature with people turning to snacks. I wouldn't call it scary, but it did have the build up for the reveal, and it gives the scary idea of eating people without knowing it or just the idea of failing to give the warning. 7/10
Phantasm:
Another movie I was recommended to watch. This Tall Man was something alright. I liked Mike and Jody, especially when they didn't play the "Jody needs to believe his brother" for too long. The pacing felt a little off though, a little slow and unfocused at time.
7/10
Dracula (1979): First off: Yes, I saw it because it was referenced in Fallen Kingdom. Frank Langella is an underrated Dracula. He's like Christopher Lee and Bela Lugosi combined into 1. Also from my understanding he's the first Dracula to play it in a more romantic take as opposed to the previous ones, so he did have an impact for the vampire culture. I won't harp on the story because at this point I've seen enough Dracula movies and each of them had the same basic premise with few changes here and there, but this one had Donald Pleasance and Sylvester McCoy so that's a double win in my book. 8/10