Halloween Movie Night #14 - Frozen

I learned about the movie Frozen while looking up info about a writer/director that I like named Adam Green. He came on the scene with the incredible horror flick called Hatchet (a movie I just bought on DVD and plan to watch again very soon) and another one called Spiral - both movies that I very much enjoyed. When I saw that he had also made this one, I immediately wanted to get it and see it. Thankfully, I remembered that a co-worker mentioned having it so the next day I begged her to lend it to me.

The premise is simple, yet really scary: three college students spend a Sunday on the ski slopes and convince the ski lift operator to let them go up right before closing to get one last trip down the slopes. Naturally, they are overlooked as the crew shuts down the lift and they are left hanging in the middle of it.

Already it's pretty scary. I wouldn't call this a horror flick, really, yet it is pretty horrific to think about being left out on a ski lift over night - or two or three nights. I really can't say any more about the plot without giving things away, though I will say that elements of horror to pop up.

After watching the movie I found some reviews where people claimed that this movie does for skiing what Jaws did for swimming. Then I read another review which revised that claim and compared this more to Open Water than to Jaws. I'd have to agree more with the second observation. This movie is all about being stranded and alone and the feelings of hoplessness that surround that situation.

While I didn't find Frozen to be more exciting than Hatchet (which is a gruesome slasher movie that I can't wait to see again) Frozen does work. The characters are likable and you really care about them - that's the only way a movie like this can even begin to work. The performances were fantastic. Kevin Zegers came from the Air Bud movies and another fantastic movie called Trans America with one of my favorite actresses Felicity Huffman (and he was naked in that one!).

Emma Bell as Parker does a great job with her character - moving away from the "poor me" aspect typical of characters in this type of situation. Yet at the same time, she does a great job of making you worry about her and care about her outcome.

Throughout frozen, though, I kept getting distracted by how much Shawn Ashmore looks like Eric Dane, McSteamy from Grey's Anatomy. They must be related somehow!

I really did enjoy this movie. It moves a bit more slowly than some people may be able to take, but it's a good movie from a really great writer/director.

Halloween Movie Night #13 - Elvira: Mistress of the Dark

I decided to take a break from the gore and violence and watched Elvira: Mistress of the Dark tonight. I had planned on watching this before watching Night of the Living Dead on Elvira's revived TV show and was a little leary given how little I thought of her comments during that movie.

Make no mistake, Cassandra Peterson's film debut as her macabre character is campy, silly, riddled with sexual inuendo and it is a LOT of fun! I found myself laughing a lot more than rolling my eyes. Some of Elvira's one-liners were actually pretty good, even if the delivery was mostly cheesy.

The highlight of the film was Edie McClurg as the purity-driven leader of the town's mob that eventually gets poor Elvira burning at the stake. McClurg is the bubbly actress that I first remember seeing on the 80's show The Hogan Family as the... well... bubbly and often annoying neighbor Mrs. Poole. My favorite moment from that show (well, at least the one I remember with the most fondness) was a little cheer she once did: "Don't be a fool, dial P for Poole! Uh Huh! Uh Huh!" Cheesy, I know, but that's the kinda thing that usually gets me laughing. She was also in my favorite scene from Planes, Trains and Automobiles as the Marathon clerk with the priceless line to Steve Martin: "You're fucked!" Let's face it, the woman has done a LOT!

So tonight's movie was a lot of fun and a welcome break from the gore I've been watching lately. There is a sequel called Elvira's Haunted Hills which I hope to get and watch during my run of macabre Halloween movies.

Halloween Movie Night #12 - The Evil Dead

The Evil Dead is a creepy zombie movie that has a pretty strong cult following. Most of the reviews I read call it a classic and by all rights, it probably deserves that title.

Five college students end up at a decrepit cottage in the middle of nowhere and find themselves surrounded by trees that apparently really want them all dead. They find a book made from human skin and written with human blood and the journal tapes of its author who took his wife to the cabin to study...something.

One of the three women gets drawn out into the woods where she is stripped and raped by trees. No, I'm not kidding. This leads to her becoming possessed and attacking the other four college students. One by one they are attacked and transformed into possessed demons, though one of them ends up looking like a little girl who got into mommy's makeup.

It was pretty interesting that the three women were the first to transform and start harrassing the others. The two men are left trying to figure out what is going on and what to do about it. Some might make the claim that this movie is all about women being the weaker sex and therefore easier to possess, but I'm not going to try and read too much into this.

There were some creepy and extremely gory moments in the movie and, while I will probably check out its sequels and the movie I am Bruce, I probably won't be rushing to watch this original any time soon.

Halloween Movie Night #11 - The Hills Have Eyes 2

The Hills Have Eyes 2 is one of those sequels that was probably rushed into production after the success of the first one. It didn't add anything to the original story because none of the characters from the first film are even in it. What we have in this film is a weak plot and even weaker characters.

The movie opens with a massacre of scientists who are studying the area. Nothing is told about the survivors of the family from the first film. I guess we are just to assume that they are the reason that the scientists are there at all. One by one they are killed by the canibal mutants in the area.

My first big question about this movie was where in the hell did these mutants come from? All of the main mutants were killed in the first one. I guess this fact was an issue for the mutants from the sequel becuase they're whole point seems to be to rape women who happen on the remote area and force them to birth new mutants after which the women are killed.

We are barely introduced to the "Bad News Bears" version of a military unit who are assigned the mission of bringing supplies (I think) to the scientists. Naturally, they find that everyone is dead and soon, they start dying, too. The canibalistic nature of the mutants isn't addressed as much in this one. This time, they seem content on just throwing the men around in an effort to get to the two women that they want to rape.

I'd spoil more of the movie, but I doubt anyone should actually see it anyway. While the first film was extremely violent and gory, at least the story was interesting and the victims were given enough character traits to make their deaths of more concern. The military people in this sequel are so two-demensional that I doubt even re-releasing this in the 3D format would be enough to make them interesting. Oh crap, I'm giving them ideas, aren't I?

Halloween Movie Night #10 - Night of the Living Dead

I watched Night of the Living Dead as part of an 80's icon comeback. Remember Elvira? She is apparently making a return to her TV show Elvira's Movie Macabre and Night of the Living Dead was the first movie to be showcased.

I have seen Night of the Living Dead before and though it is responsible for the whole idea of zombies as we know it today, it's a pretty cheesy movie. I still don't know what the useless blond Debbie's whole point of being in the movie was. While Ben (Elvira calls him a "young Barack Obama") is busy boarding up windows and doors, Debbie just sits on the couch in a daze. When other characters enter the picture and start arguing, Debbie just sits on the couch in a daze. Every time someone notices her, they give her an odd look until someone explains "her brother died" as though that excuses her pointless existence. She even fades into the story with no real resolution to her character, though by that point I didn't really care.

I realize that Night of the Living Dead is a classic and I shouldn't be so hard on it since it was made in the 60's. Still, even Psycho, also made in the 60's manages to capture my attention more.

What may have ruined this viewing of the film for me was Elvira. She would pop on the screen every now and then with a Mystery-Science-Theater-style comment. At one point, Debbie picks up the phone to see if it's working and a bubble popped up with Elvira pretending to be on the other line. The gag was as unfunny and pointless as Debbie's existence in the movie.

Bookending the commercial breaks was a weak storyline about Elvira returning her basement studio to the look of a lair. While holding a can of dust, she explains that she's "dusting." She goes through a box of old props and makes stupid comments about things she pulls out. I'm guessing that since I never saw her show back in the 80's, I'm missing the point of her character. I did see her live show once at Knott's Scary Farm and I remember her jokes being funnier. For example, she commented that the rollercoaster Corkscrew was going to be removed from the park. Her insight was that "there would be no more screwing around at Knott's." It's cheesy, but it's funny and I still remember that joke to this day. Another joke I still remember was when she called her tits "Lethal Weapon 1 and Lethal Weapon 2".

Halloween Movie Night #9 - The Hills Have Eyes

Oh, man...

The Hills Have Eyes was sick on SO many levels! I probably should have watched this one during the day rather than at night.

A family is traveling through the desert in an SUV and a camper. They stop for gas at this creepy station and are given directions for a shortcut by the proprietor. Of course, this leads them to a dead end, a crashed vehicle and a menagorie of deformed cannibals.

The less said about this one the better.

I also have the sequel, but I'm not sure if I'm going to delve into that one. Several reviews of it indicate that it's pointless and not very good. This one was interesting, but MAN was it gory. I think my next Halloween movie will have to be a cute Disney one again! Seriously! Maybe I should start getting into the Halloweentown series.

Halloween Movie Night #8 - Where the wild Things Are

I have been wanting to see Where the Wild Things Are for awhile now. I didn't see it in theaters. I've actually never even read the book. I was trying to figure out how make it fit into my "Halloween movies" theme, hoping that the fact that the wild things looked like monsters would be enough to justify it.

So, it's not a horror movie with disemboweling crazies ripping people apart or a manic killer massacring people on a grand scale. It's not even about Halloween. But I think it fits anyway, because it's about wrestling with your inner demons. Max is a kid with a lot of anger issues and this adventure that he goes on in the movie shows him how distructive that kind of behavoir can be to the ones you love.

Besides, aren't inner demons just as scary as any of the ones dreamt up by Stephen King or Dean Koontz or Wes Craven? I just took a moment to speak to my inner demons and they informed me that I should not fear them, that they are my friends. I think that just reinforces my theory.

I enjoyed Where the Wild Things Are. It's not a splashy movie with explosions, nudity or car chases, but it's got a great message and cast and it was fun to watch.

I did a little research about Maurice Sendak, the author of the book and was excited to discover that he wrote and illustrated one of my favorite books from childhood: In the Night Kitchen. That is apparently one of the top banned books of all time because the kid in that is nude (with frontal shots) for much of the book.

As I read more about Sendak, I also learned that he came out of the closet in a 2008 article. Maybe that's why I was so into the book In the Night Kitchen when I was a kid. I keep hearing Maurice Sendak's name a lot during the holidays, too, because he disigned the costumes and sets for the local Pacific Northwest Ballet's annual Nutcracker Suite production. I still have never seen that either...maybe this year I'll check it out.