When you get right down to it, there are a ton of potential choices for Halloween movie viewing marathons. For the sake of brevity, I am choosing just five selections which will still take you a good day to get through so plan ahead to take the day off from your work or school grind! Wolfen (1981) – a cop is assigned to investigate a series of animal attacks. Is there a pack of werewolves on the loose in modern day New York? Some creepy situations and a suspenseful story should keep you entertained throughout. Albert Finney and Gregory Hines [More]
I have given a minute or two of thought to what I would enjoy most viewing on Halloween. I would most definitely need to take the day off of work because this lineup would probably consume a good 10 hours. Sacrifices must be made! Granted this is the first of what may be a series of some of my most adored movies piled together in one marathon viewing. These movies are what came off the top of my head at the time and can definitely be mixed and matched and replaced with other selections. I think that makes sense. 5 [More]
Back when Hammer Films were all the rage and knocking horror fans dead at the box office, “Dracula: Prince of Darkness” marked the return of Christopher Lee to the title roll of the infamous undead vampire king. He had gone away from the role after his turn as the blood sucker in the remarkable “Horror of Dracula” (1958), one of Hammer Films’ first stabs at rebooting the Universal monster cycle from films decades before. Lee appeared in Hammer Films such as “The Gorgon” (1964) and “She” (1965). He just wasn’t interested in playing Dracula. But through whatever form of alchemy [More]
African prince is “converted” to blood thirsty, undead vampire by Dracula. The Prince becomes a vampire and progresses through the centuries turning others in to vampires in his passing. Very entertaining vampire flick from the 1970’s that follows Blacula’s modern day wake of death and destruction as he feeds his hunger for blood. Naturally, a lot of the film takes place at night which lends a creepy air and some of the surprise vampire attacks are startling. Some of the action is clumsy and dumb but William Marshall as Blacula lends a sinister, menacing presence. Fantasy movie veteran Elisha [More]
Wunderkind drummer for The Who, Keith Moon, left this mortal coil 40 years ago. What a loss. The legendary madman lead an alcohol and drug fueled existence that bolstered his outgoing personality and flashy, unorthodox, drum style. Alas, this very fast lifestyle also accelerated an early end to his explosive drumming style and life. As the years wore on and the intoxicants flowed, so to did his strength and lifeforce get tapped. Moon died at the age of 32 on September 7, 1978. Please examine YouTube videos of his earlier days when he was in his prime. You will be [More]
A documentary detailing the history of the vampire character Dracula, assembled using various movie clips and the narration of horror icon, Vincent Price. You’ll see clips from the silent “Nosferatu” and other cinematic appearances featuring the ancient blood sucker such as Lugosi in “Mark of the Vampire”, and the 1950’s alternative vampire film, “The Vampire” . “VPD” is a good flick to curl up by the fire to watch as we come upon the Autumn season and move closer to Halloween. Heavy on the garlic fries. Hehe.
The premise of this queasy little tale is that climate change, aka global warming, has caused the partial thawing of a wooly mammoth up in Northern climes that is infested with an ancient parasite that emerges ready and willing to infest a New Age. The roughly cockroach sized bugs burrow under your skin and lay eggs that basically feed on their host and then emerge ready to find a new home. This movie is definitely not for the squeamish! Yes. I felt my skin crawl on more than one occasion. There are numerous grotesque set pieces throughout this flick. All [More]
A mildly amusing Saturday afternoon diversion, “Graveyard Shift” was based on a Stephen King short story. Here it is fleshed out into movie length and a large part of that filling is loaded with oozing, despicable caricatures. A bunch of people you could care less about are tasked with cleaning up the lower level area of a mill located somewhere on the east coast. Maybe the extraction of all the crap which has accumulated down there over the years will alleviate some of the rat problem that infests the place. What is not known is that the mother of all [More]
A real creepy premise in this flick: giant, mutated ants are on the loose and stalking victims in isolated areas of the God forsaken desert! I bring you this cinematic, sci-fi gem because of a recent summer time invasion of the small variety of ants in our house in pursuit of the cat’s food. These little beasts are annoying enough in their present miniature state as they scamper in all directions as you try to eradicate their presence inside your home. In addition to the trouble of getting them picked up and removed, you get the sinister feeling that the [More]
Legendary science fiction and fantasy writer Harlan Ellison has passed away. Call him an iconoclast, outspoken, a larger than life character who didn’t suffer fools, especially those he felt tampered with the integrity of his work. He reached a settlement with CBS 40 years after his script for “Star Trek”-TOS, “City on the Edge of Forever” had been delivered to reclaim his share of the profits generated from his work. He had more impressions on the television industry collected in his series “The Glass Teat”. Acidic observations to say the least. I count Ellison as an early influence in my [More]
Have you ever noticed the greatly relied on device used in the movies where a character will emotionally discharge a big gun of some type? I guess the reaction is supposed to characterize a last gasp burst of attack against a nearly undefeatable opponent (Independence Day: Resurgence). Terminator Salvation has multiple examples of actors unloading weapons’ magazine after magazine in an attempt to stop a non human juggernaut. To get an idea of what I am referring to, please go to the clip. You can probably get away with this type of behavior at the target range.
I have come across this story a couple of times and see it as a truly chilling account of hunters turning into prey. Hunters off in a very remote wilderness “trespass” across an unknown creature’s domain. Things go very downhill from there. This story is given an air of credibility when it is discovered that this tale was relayed to Theodore Roosevelt by an old Mountain Man and included in Roosevelt’s book, “The Wilderness Hunter”. After reading it several times over the years, it has yet to loose its fearsome, chilling effect. Probably my favorite old time Bigfoot report. Of [More]
Art Bell just passed away. Bell was a very interesting fellow who started the Coast To Coast AM radio program. Bell was a pretty good interviewer and would let his guests discuss their topics at length. Bell followed his interests and featured a lot of paranormal topics and brought on guests who discussed UFO’s, Bigfoot, ghosts, and other strange phenomena. I spent many a night listening to his program and getting scared out of my wits and avoiding sleep. I have great memories of Bell, his beliefs and his sense of humor. The clip I linked to is an example [More]
Twisted Russian fantasy film depicting a manned trip to Mars. Propagandistic in tone in that Russian technology is capable of any space voyage/adventure in these films (see “Planeta Burg”) but the reality is that there was a long record of Russian space mission failures. It seems that the plot formula in a lot of these films is that the homeland’s advanced technology delivers men to the Moon, Mars, and The Stars, but once there, things become unraveled and life or death situations materialize. A drama is thus born. There are no shortage of beautiful and eerie landscapes rendered in shockingly [More]