I thought I’d start up a venue for people to give some Halloween horror movie recommendations. Let’s stick to stuff we’re not all already painfully familiar with, if you please… here are some of my own vaguely off-key recommendations.
Frankenstein Unbound - I love this movie for some reason, maybe because it is the only really excellent modern retelling of the Frankenstein story. John Hurt plays a 21st century scientist who develops a weapon that blinks people out of time, only to accidentally tear open the fabric of space and time and be transported to 19th century Geneva, where he encounters Raul Julia and the Frankenstein monster and also bones Bridget Fonda as portrayed by Mary Shelley. He also drives around Geneva in a talking car and allows Jason Patric to do a really terrible Lord Byron impersonation at him. This all sounds really cheesy and I guess with Roger Corman behind the helm it is but for me it all really works because of the association that John Hurt and Frankenstein feel with one another: both are scientists out to make the world a safer place who have instead created monstrosities that challenge their own belief in a godless universe. At the end of the film (which is just an absolutely brilliant spin on the novel’s scenes involving Victor Frankenstein hunting his monster across the glacial Arctic), John Hurt ends up taking up Frankenstein’s quest to kill his monster as a redemption against his own work, which is not so easily destroyed. If you see it at the video stores, definitely give it a rent - it is probably the best Frankenstein films since the Boris Karloff entires, and definitely the best quasi-faithful adaptation of the book I’ve ever seen.
As an aside, the movie is based on a novel by the same name by sci-fi author Brian Aldiss. I was checking up on Amazon.com on his work and confirmed my memory of a sequel called “Dracula Unbound”. The user review is priceless: “Dracula Unbound can be summed up like so: What if Dracula had a time machine? This book has some chilling answers to that question. Not just another vampire novel, this story takes you on a frightening time ride where you realize that what could be a dangerous thing in mortal hands is a devastating weapon coupled with the immortal wisdom of Dracula.”
Assault on Precinct 13 - Dawn of the Dead with street punks instead of zombies. Why are all of John Carpenter’s ideas so absolutely fucking stupid, and why do they end up always working so well?
Brain Dead - Another entry in the oeuvre of cheap direct-to-video horror movies of the 80’s, it has a Phillip K. Dick halluncnogenic memory vibe as channeled through the corpse of Twilight Zone great Charles Beaumont. I probably can’t do a better synopsis than the Rotten Tomatoes one: The Eunice Corporation is on the ground floor of an exciting industry–memory resculpting. It envisions nationwide clinics where anyone can lose the hang-ups of an unhappy childhood, a failed romance, or a botched career. Dr. Rex Martin (Bill Pullman) is employed there as a neurologist who is trying to find the part of the brain that causes paranoia. He performs an experimental operation on John Halsey (Bud Cort)–a mathematician who went crazy and murdered his family–which eliminates Halsey’s paranoia, but once the operation is compete, it appears that the madness has taken over Martin’s psyche. Martin then finds himself in an asylum experiencing hallucinations from Halsey’s point of view. Has the best line in any horror movie, ever: “Give me back my brain!”
I remember Mr. Frost being good, but I was on a few choice College level drugs then (not laudenum) so I can’t tell you why (maybe it’s a Goldblum thing). Exorcist III is underrated as well.
The Wicker Man? I watched this again recently and it is 70’s free love hippy tripe at its self-indulgent worst. Bad acting, terrible, embarassing musical numbers, a dull, plodding pace, etc. A great horror story idea with one of the worst executions in modern cinematic history.
Er, Rosemary’s Baby is in color. Great movie, though. Just the Dakota itself is incredibly spooky. “Guy’s eyes are normal!”
And Andrew’s right on Exorcist III. It’s really underrated. The hospital corridor scene is one of the most tense, scary moments ever captured on film. I saw the movie for the first time 10 or 12 years ago after midnight in a Holiday Inn in Winnipeg of all places (rented it from a machine in the lobby), and actually turned the bathroom light before trying to sleep.
And there’s an even more priceless reader review at Amazon for Dracula Unbound, further down the page:
“I was still confused, but I kept reading, and I was thrilled! It had mystery, suspense, laughter, and even a partial love scene.”
The hospital corridor scene is one of the most tense, scary moments ever captured on film. I saw the movie for the first time 10 or 12 years ago after midnight in a Holiday Inn in Winnipeg of all places (rented it from a machine in the lobby), and actually turned the bathroom light before trying to sleep.
I was gonna mention just how superbly that scene was filmed, but I was afraid it might not hold up to my memory’s appreciation for it. Glad someone else noticed how fantastic that scene was… I love how they just hold that brooding long distance shot of the dark hallway for minutes.
I say this as someone who had fond memories of this movie until I recently rewatched it on DVD: the movie stinks. Go watch it again and tell me that it is brilliant, as Christopher Lee hams it up as a Byronic hippy free-lover with a lilac cravat and every ten minutes there is another excruticating musical number. Tyrion’s “are you sure you weren’t watching Charlie and the Chocolate Factory?” retort makes me think he hasn’t watched it in awhile, since I didn’t remember the stinky, awful, terrible, completely inappropiate accoustic guitar hippy sing alongs either. Completely, inexplicably overrated by almost everyone, including ex-me.
Vincent Price in The Abominable Dr. Phibes. More silly than scary, but with a wonderfully strange sense of design. There’s a sequel as well, but I haven’t seen it since I was a kid, so don’t know if it holds up…
William Peter Blatty, author of Exorcist and Legion, which Exorcist III was based upon, directed Exorcist III as well. I’d love to see him do some more work in film, because this one was shot extremely well (I hear his other movie, The Ninth Configuration, is also interesting). The corridor shot was just brilliant, and you know that the hacks who typically do low-budget horror would never have held it, held it, held it nearly as long. The ceiling creeping was also nicely, um, creepy, as was the one with the cups of blood, those gleaming autopsy shears, etc. I even liked the ending, though I know a lot of people find it to be the weakest part of the movie.
One more offbeat Halloween movie, also with George C. Scott – The Changeling. For my money, the absolute best ghost story every filmed. Worth buying on DVD.
I actually only saw the Wicker Man for the first time a couple of years ago, and liked it so much I bought the special edition DVD, so yeah, I think it holds up – really creepy horror movie, with a building sense of dread. The music numbers just make the crazy celtic folk seem more creepy.
…and Christopher Lee is fantastic in the movie. One of my all-time favourite lines:
The Equalizer: “…but what of the true God, the Christian God??”
Dracula/Dooku/Saurman/ManwithGolden Gun: “He is…dead. He can’t complain…he had his chance. To use your modern parlance, ‘he blew it’”
Nothing ever scared me like The Exorcist when I saw it at the theatre. I also knew it was inspired by an exorcism that occurred in my home town of St. Louis, so it was easy to imagine that if there was any truth to it, that St. Louis demon could be waiting for me when I went to bed later that night.
I think The Lady in White is a good ghost story.
The original The Haunting was scary when I saw it on TV as a kid, but I don’t think it holds up as well today. It’s tame in comparison. Still, some creepy moments and a good gotcha or two.
My wife was really creeped out by the original The Haunting, Mark. We watched it last week. Personally I wish the pounding scene had more realistic pounding (it sounded like they were pounding a mic) but they did a great job drawing it out and drawing you in. The hand holding scene was especially well done, I thought. Anyway, worlds better than that ham handed and crappy remake.
Terrific book too. The Haunting of Hill House. GREAT opening paragraph:
“No live organism can continue for long to exist sanely under conditions of absolute reality; even larks and katydids are supposed, by some, to dream. Hill House, not sane, stood by itself against its hills…”
But The Manitou… it was about this woman that has a weird tumor on her back, and a dead Indian dude eventually grows out of it. Great, great stuff. And Tony Curtis!
I think I saw both of these in theaters before I was 10. No wonder I’m fucked up.
