Halloween Horror Countdown 2009 Day 9 October 15, 2009
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Tales of Terror
1962
Directed by Roger Corman
Whenever I see a movie where Roger Corman adapts Edgar Allen Poe I love it. In this he adapts three stories.
Not enough reason for you to watch it? I’ll give you three more:
1) Vincent Price
2) Peter Lorre
3) VINCENT FREAKING PRICE!!!!
It gets four spooky pumpkins out of five.
Isle of the Dead
1945
Directed by Mark Robson
This might only loosely qualify as a horror film. The characters are certainly under the impression that there is a monster on the loose, but thhe movie stresses that’s what happens when people are put under stress, they fall on superstition.
Boris Karloff plays a Greek general in the war of 1912 who becomes charged with quarantining an island where there has been an outbreak of plague. There is, of course, a superstitious old school lady on the island, and things get tricky.
I give it two and a half spooky pumpkins out of five.
Halloween Horror Countdown 2009 Day 8 October 14, 2009
Posted by vorpalkeith in Film Thing.Tags: cabin fever, halloween horror countdown, zombieland
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Cabin Fever
2002
Directed by Eli Roth
I don’t recall seeing anything like THAT on Boy Meets World!
The horror in this movie is something that has the potential to be genuinely frightening. It’s not a murderer, or a monster, or a murderous monster . . . it’s disease. In the end, there is nothing scarier than the idea of our own bodies betraying us. Trust me, I know from what I speak on this count.
It’s not a great movie, but it gets it right on the gore count.
I need to criticize it mostly for the last ten minutes, which are just a mess. I’m not entirely sure what was happening during it. For some reason the police had the main character, then he was dead by a river? A previously dead character (I swear we saw this guy’s entrails!) just wanders out of the woods only to die moments later. It’s just so all over the place that it ruined what had come before.
Also, if you should ever get a flesh-eating disease, don’t shave your legs. The results are oogy.
I give it two and a half spooky pumpkins out of five. It lost points for the last ten minutes.
Zombieland
2009
Directed by Ruben Fleischer
I’m not going to belabor this point, but this is the best comedy of 2009. There, I said it. Also, there are zombies and creative zombie kills. Also, lots of laughter. GO WATCH THIS MOVIE.
It gets my highest rating of the countdown so far, five spooky pumpkins out of five.
Halloween Horror Countdown 2009 Day 7 October 13, 2009
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Undead
2003
Directed by the Spierig Brothers
“In my day we fucking respected our parents! We didn’t fucking try to eat them!”
It’s a bold statement in a movie if you’re going to include both zombies and aliens. The only other movie that springs to mind that had this particular combination was Plan 9 From Outer Space.
That may have been a spoiler, but oh well.
This Australian film really harkens back to things like Evil Dead, in a good way. It’s really a silly movie with shoddy CG work and lots of splattery gore. There is a bearded badass wearing a cowboy hat wielding three shotguns simultaneously. There were points where I expected Bruce Campbell to show up!
It’s a film that knows exactly what it is, and for that I give it credit. It tries to entertain in the silliest, popcorniest way.
Fish attack!
I give it four spooky pumpkins out of five.
Halloween Horror Countdown 2009 Day 6 October 8, 2009
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Mad Love
1935
Directed by Karl Freund
Peter Lorre . . . you so creepy!
Mad Love is the tale of a scientist who grafts the hands of an executed knife-throwing murderer onto the husband of the actress he is obsessed with. The hands take on a life of their own . . . sort of. Or maybe they didn’t. It was kind of hard to tell. Anyway, the husband, who before had been a concert pianist does wind up with some mad knife-throwing skills.
He’s not the villain though. The villain is the obsessed doctor, who is played by Peter Lorre in his usual pitch-perfect Peter Lorre style.
So I may not be able to tell you if the hands actually came alive, but I can say that Peter Lorre is the man.
I give it two spooky pumpkins out of five.
Halloween Horror Countdown 2009 Day 5 October 6, 2009
Posted by vorpalkeith in Film Thing.Tags: halloween horror countdown, i walked with a zombie, voodoo
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I Walked With a Zombie
1943
Directed by Jacques Tourneur
With this I am calling a moritorium on watching movies about voodoo zombies for the Halloween Horror Countdown. Over the past few years I’ve just seen too many of them and I just grow weary. Maybe next year there will be more, but for this year there shall be no more voodoo zombies!
It’s a pretty standard plot. A nurse is hired to take care of a rich man’s wife, who was turned into a zombie, but everyone believes her to be mentally ill. Everyone, of course, but the local voodoo sect.
They didn’t get their voodoo zombie science right. You can’t just wish someone to be a voodoo zombie. You have to give them the voodoo zombie powder. Everyone knows that.
The one thing this movie has going for it is one super super creepy voodoo guy. But that’s it.
I only give it a single spooky pumpkin out of five.
Halloween Horror Countdown 2009 Day 4 October 5, 2009
Posted by vorpalkeith in Film Thing.Tags: halloween horror countdown, the flesh and the fiends
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The Flesh and the Fiends
1960
Directed by John Gilling
The film opens with the disclaimer that it would make no apologies for the dead, because all the events were true. It’s hard to argue with that, as the acts performed were pretty despicable.
It covers the story of real life serial murderers Burke and Hare. Burke and Hare are a group of “resurrectionists”; essentially grave robbers who sell cadavers for medical study. When their supplies of fresh bodies ran low, they started killing people for fresh bodies.
Peter Cushing plays Doctor Robert Knox, the doctor whom they are selling the bodies to. Have I mentioned how much I like Peter Cushing?
Something interesting to note about this: there are currently two seperate projects in development about Burke and Hare, a graphic novel and an upcoming feature film in which Simon Pegg is set to star.
I give it two spooky pumpkins out of five.
Halloween Horror Countdown 2009 Day 3 October 4, 2009
Posted by vorpalkeith in Film Thing.Tags: halloween horror countdown, silent films, wild oranges
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Wild Oranges
1929
Directed by King Vidor
I feel as though the plot description on my DVR’s guide feature lied to me. It gave me the idea that this film was meant to be a horror story about a homicidal maniac, and I guess it was, but not really.
This is a silent film, as you can imagine from the year it was made. The print they made the digital copy from was pretty badly scratched and artifacted, as you might expect.
The plot deals with a young boat captain arriving on an island where a man and his granddaughter live with a simpleton. The simpleton loves the girl and asks her to marry him, to which she is horrified and he goes kill crazy.
Um, this movie wasn’t very good. . . The message seems to be that the mentally handicapped are one bad day away from becoming homicidal maniacs. It’s pretty offensive in that regard actually.
I will give it one amount of props in that it attempted some pretty early special effects. They tinged the film different colors for different lighting effects. Blue for nighttime, pink for sunsight, and orange for firelight.
I give it one half of a spooky pumpkin out of five.
Halloween Horror Countdown 2009 Day 2 October 3, 2009
Posted by vorpalkeith in Film Thing.Tags: halloween horror countdown, sherlock holmes, the hound of the baskervilles
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The Hound of the Baskervilles
1959
Directed by Terence Fisher
Hammer Films!
I don’t really need to go into many details about the story of this. Everyone knowns the story. It’s one of Sherlock Holmes’s most famous cases. There have also been innumberable film adaptations. So what I want to talk about here is the things that make this adaptation unique.
In the end, those unique qualities boil down to two things: Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee. The great Hammer Horror acting team and real life best-friends are paired once again in this. There’s a particular magic that happens when these two get to make a movie together.
It just makes me wish Peter Cushing so much. Can you imagine if Cushing and Lee got a chance to make another film together?
I give it three spooky pumpkins out of five.
Some Quick Science Links October 2, 2009
Posted by vorpalkeith in Podcast Appearances, science.Tags: The Trip, carbon nanotubes, neuroscience
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I should thank my brother for sending me lots of science links all the time.
Brain scans could soon reveal what we’ve seen! http://www.cnn.com/2009/TECH/09/25/brain.scans.wired/index.html
Carbon nanotubes could spawn super fertilizers! http://www.popsci.com/scitech/article/2009-09/carbon-nanotubes-boost-plant-growth-could-spawn-super-fertilizers
After this is going to check how many posts I’ve made that have been tagged with the phrase “carbon nanotubes”. I’m going to bet its a surprising amount. Then, I’m going to go ahead and invest in carbon nanotubes futures.
Also, there’s a new episode of The Trip floating around out there on iTunes and on the website directly. It’s about Dr. Seuss. We also discuss the shocking connection between Yurtle the Turtle and Adolf Hitler, so, you know, that’s worth checking out . . .
