Director Robert Eggars, of the upcoming Nosferatu remake, laid out his ideal Halloween film festival for AV Club, and it's worth looking at.  Some pretty good movies, largely avoiding the obvious, and spanning a solid 24 hours.

The Innocents (1961)
The Queen of Spades (1949)
Svengali (1931)
Murders in the Rue Morgue (1932)
Uncle Silas (1947)
The Body Snatcher (1945)
The Hound of the Baskervilles (1939)
The Black Room (1935)
Jane Eyre (1943)
Bedlam (1946)
Dragonwyke (1946)
The Face at the Window (1939)
Corridor of Mirrors (1948)
Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street (1936)
The Catman of Paris (1946)
Demons of the Mind (1972)
Crucible of Horror (1971)

There's several here that I haven't seen - Uncle Silas, Dragonwyke, Face at the Window, Corridor of Mirrors, Sweeney Todd, Catman of Paris, Crucible of Horror - and at least one I don't really like (Demons of the Mind, which I just reviewed this year with a middling 6/10).  Also, even though Eggars included the film on his list, he points out that Rue Morgue is "not a good movie", which, for me, strong disagree.  But thanks for including it, so you'll have to judge for yourself.  All in all though, it's a pretty damn good set for viewing, especially focused on more gothic fare from the '30s-'40s.

You can read Eggars' thoughts on each film here.
 

Rock wrote:

Everything I watched for the season: https://boxd.it/yX3wu

Can't believe you just got to Serpent and the Rainbow.  It's been Pullman's season.

I need to make one of these lists.

I remember the sexy video box as being pretty ubiquitous on the shelves in the late '80s, under its English title Nothing Underneath, and I didn't really have any idea that it was an Italian production.  I've said before that Italian giallo took a marked dip in quality in the '80s, blame it on the coke and disco maybe.  In fact I must have said something similar over an earlier film from director Carlo Vancina, Dagger Eyes.  Vancina appears to be more commonly a comedy filmmaker, which might explain a few things.  Briefly, this script was being developed as an Antonioni project, which is quite a tantalizing prospect, as he had never attempted a horror/thriller.  Wisely, perhaps, he ducked out pretty early on.

Vancina is a bargain bin De Palma.  The film, taking place amidst the fashion scene in Milan, is plenty stacked with beautiful, sexy actresses - Nicola Perring, Anna Galiena, Renee Simonsen, Catherine Noyes - all in various states of equally sexy danger, but despite this, Vancina has a weak hand for the sensual or erotic, and even less feel for suspense and inventive camerawork.  The refried De Palma-isms date the film as clearly on the heels of Body Double, with Perring wearing an identical platinum blonde crewcut as Melanie Griffith and a climatic revision of the drill scene (with a gender role twist).  These kinds of De Palma rip-offs might even be their own recognized genre now, with a dedicated fanbase, but outside of that camp, this is mostly empty calorie entertainment.

6.5/10





Director Neil Marshall (Dog Soldiers, The Descent) sure has fallen on hard times.  He's now resorting to making this, Compulsion in English, a more 21st century version of De Palma-humping, but in some low-budget Balkan tax haven, shooting on cheap digital, and ending up with something less De Palma than one of those Skinamax filcks with the likes of Joan Severance or Julie Strain.  We still get plenty of lesbian seduction, with a side of BDSM and an incoherent slasher mystery, but also a terrible script and amateurish acting and insisting that his mostly European cast speak English when they clearly have no idea how to speak English.  (Anna-Maria Sieklucka is fine, an exception to all of this, but is wasted here.)  Marshall's wife, Charlotte Kirk, in particular is limited to allegedly physical talents.  She does speak perfect English however, giving her even less of an excuse.

4/10


 

I guess it's officially recognized that this is pretty much a rip-off of Cat People, but that doesn't really bother me that much, as I'm always open to the type of horror film which embraces psychosexual elements, and. especially for its time, somewhat explicitly.  In fact, this film is more explicit in its psychology than Cat People, although less effective for it.  Writer/director Alfred Shaughnessy was more of a writer, and only directed a couple of films, so although the script is strong (as more of a psychological thriller than a horror film), Shaughnessy lacks the cinematic finesse of Jacques Tourneur to turn these explicit ideas into nonverbal images and atmosphere.  So unfortunately in this film, striking images are pretty fleeting.  The saving strength is in the fantastic lead performance from Barbara Shelley.

7.5/10




Independent production from Britain, which features two unnamed lesbian lovers, one of which commits suicide (for unexplained reasons) while the other, claiming a lineage from a witch's coven, decides to resurrect her dead lover.  This isn't a Pet Semetary scenario though, and as a horror film it's pretty weak.  As a psychological drama, it's underwritten, even if the performances are reasonably good.  It touches on interesting subjects, but leaves most of it to assumption and speculation.  It also, for whatever reason, decided not to bother with any kind of ending, although whether that was due to lazy ambiguity or budget constraints is unclear.  Maybe the writer/director team of India Howland and Will Pinhey have a better film in them for the future.

6.5/10
 

This 1972 rarity is uncommonly entertaining for a made–for–tv feature. “So bad it’s good” camp horror with some nevertheless legitimately funny writing. Surprisingly well–paced, surprisingly violent, and surprisingly pervy for a made–for–tv movie. Plenty of familiar themes, here; a socially tone–deaf academic specializing in ancient occult studies travels with his sexy daughter (played by Jennifer Salt) and armed with his trusty cassette dictation machine deep into New Mexican nowhere, arriving at a shack adorned with a dusty old sign that reads Uncle Willie’s Desert Museum. There Uncle Willie shows them the demonic–looking skeleton he shouldn’t have dug up, and all hell promptly breaks loose. Throw in a besotted motel caretaker, a stoic local sheriff and his goofy deputy, a gang of clean–shaven dirtbike enthusiasts with tucked–in t-shirts led by a young Scott Glenn, and a brood of intelligent demonic beings that are essentially Creature from the Black Lagoon from the neck down but from the neck up are graced with the early handiwork of none other than special makeup effects legend Stan Winston. Shake with avant–garde percussion and unnecessary slow–motion sequences, filter through a couple of somewhat unconventional plot turns, and apparently ferment for psychoactive effect. Hey, I had fun.
Ken Miller of Monster Zone provides a loving entry on Gargoyles here, featuring a small treasure trove of wonderful stills from both on and off-screen.

Mixing up some rewatches, I did a trio of Lovecraft.




Fondly considered one of the best Lovecraft adaptations, it still holds up despite some terribly dated FX, but honestly these FX, which reflect the somewhat psychedelic time period in which it was made, still have a charm and even at times (um, the tentacle rape) retains a bit of a shock.  The film is also interesting for appropriating some Crowleyian occult moonchild magick to transform the Lovecraft's tale into one of alien insemination.  Some people have complained about Dean Stockwell's performance, but I think he's fine as both smooth and sinister.  Maybe they could have gotten a more sexier actor to sell the seduction, but Johnny Depp was only, like, six at the time.

7.5/10




I decided to revist this one after Rock's review earlier this year was far more appreciative than my own initial impression.  I don't know how much of my dismissal was based on the fact that, out of all of the classic Corman/Price adaptations of Poe in the '60s, this was the only one which kinda lied about being a Poe adaptation.  In fact, it's Lovecraft's Charles Dexter Ward, using only an unrelated Poe poem as its title seemingly only for promotional purposes.  But I think what put me off was more the general lack of evocative set design and visual flair that we saw in Usher, Masque, Pendulum, Ligeia (which roughly equates my rank of the respective films).  Still, we get that classic fog-and-castle aesthetic, the soundstage effect which makes you feel like you're in some demented Disney park ride, and we do get a climatic look at a Lovecraftian creature, which is more effective the more obscured it is, and it ultimately lacks the creative finesse of such contemporary Lovecraft creatures from Die Monster Die or Dunwich.  But the film is much better than I had given it credit for, Vincent Price is as game as ever, and even as eternally lovely as Debra Paget is, she's even nearly rivaled by the silent and brief turn from Cathie Merchant, whom I briefly thought might have been Paget herself.

7.5/10




This is first-time watch.  I don't know why, but I guess I've always shrugged off some of the final genre films in Boris Karloff's career, perhaps preferring to allow Targets to stand as his appropriate swan song.  But this film isn't bad, if a little generic.  Also a Lovecraft adaptation (loose as always), and even more steeped in the trendy 60s styles than Dunwich, with a couple of adequetely trippy dream sequences.  I believe this is the only match-up of Karloff with Christopher Lee, and that alone makes it pretty fun.  Unfortunately, Barbara Steele, who plays a hundreds-year-old witch at the center of the titular cult, shares no scenes with either.  This also features a rare speaking role for Virginia Wetherall, probably best known for her perfect breasts in Clockwork Orange.

7/10

.......


There's plenty of Lovercraftian overlap between these films, showing the resiliency of his shared-world mythos.  All three films feature the Necronomicon.  Both the witch from Crimson Cult and the ill-fated mother from Dunwich share the name "Lavinia".  Both Dunwich and Palace involve attempts at inseminating women with Cthulu seed.  

Among other Lovecraft adaptations, there's several terrible ones.  Lovecraft is notoriously difficult to depict onscreen, given his focus on interior psychological elements and phenomena which are by nature and definition immaterial and indescribable.  One of the most alluring aspects of his work is in how his characters struggle to articulate these things, such as the "colour" in "Colour Out of Space" not truly being a color at all but a vaguely perceived emission.  The finale to At The Mountain of Madness is a defining example.  From the 1960s, along with the above films, Die Monster Die (also with Boris Karloff) is among the earliest and best, a version of "Colour Out of Space", and, despite the limitations of the time, infinitely superior to the more recent trash with Nicolas Cage.  (Stephen King's "Lonesome Death of Jordy Verrill" from Creepshow is essentially a "Colour Out of Space" rewrite.)  The 80s brought us Stuart Gordan's classics Re-Animator and From Beyond, and Gordan would later also film the admirable Castle Freak and the less admirable Dagon.  Lovecraft films which involve his mythos but which are not directly based on his stories include the overlooked comedy-noir Cast a Deadly Spell and John Carpenter's In The Mouth of Madness.  And despite several attempts at filming the centerpiece Call of Cthulu, the only mildy successful version is the 2005 B&W mock-silent treatment from Andrew Leman.

Cheapy B movie, destined for TV syndication, headed by the great unsung B-movie lead Kenneth Tobey (Thing From Another World, It Came From Beneath the Sea), this is maybe more of a "Jekyll/Hyde" scenario, but one of the first vampire films with an explicit drug addiction allusion.

6.5/10




Sure, this is an Exorcist cash-in, but I enjoyed the balance it seems to bring by weighing the material between the occult dream sequences of Rosemary's Baby and somewhat presciently suggesting The Omen which wouldn't be released for another couple of years.  This aspect broadens the contrivances more fully than dreck like Beyond the Door.  We still get the collision of Freud and the Church, and the film gets weaker as the exorcisms play out, but the film has a manic energy and the score from Ennio Morricone and Bruno Nicolai is delectable.

7.5/10





I'm not too steeped in the 'nunsploitation' genre, but I understand this is one of the canon, and as sexy and strange as it is, it isn't exactly scalding either my soul or my balls.  Cecilia Pezet is a natural screen talent and I wish she worked more outside of the genre.  It is interesting, and a little devious, how the nunsploitation genre sprouted into the current 'true crime' genre.  All of the implications are there.

6/10
 

Nunsploitation usually leaves me cold (I suspect it plays differently based on your upbringing), but I found Satanico Pandemonium dramatically sturdier than most others I’ve seen, in that it takes the heroine’s struggle relatively seriously. Killer Nun is another that worked for me.

Oz Perkins did this year's 24 Hour Horror program for the AV Club.  His list isn't quite as eclectic as Robert Eggers', and there are a couple of places where I have some serious disagreements.

Oddity (a recent one from 2024)
The Hunger
The Omen
It Follows
The Ring (American)
Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me
The Cabin in the Woods
Suspiria (2018 remake)
Dracula (1931)

...and capped off with three DePalma

Body Double
Dressed To Kill
Sisters

The first one, Oddity, I haven't seen, haven't even heard of.

There's simply no way I can abide the American Ring over the Japanese Ringu.  Gore Verbinski is a hack.  About the only sensible rationale would be for those misfortunate enough to have seen the American Ring first, and have misplaced their affections like a motherless duck to a pingpong ball.

And pretty much the same goes for Suspiria, although I will grant that the central dance sequences are indeed very evocative.  But that shitty-ass ending, which Perkins seems to find "super crazy weird", "where everyone just explodes into the blood bombs".  (You know, maybe that similarly dumbass ending to Gretel and Hansel wasn't studio interference after all.)  "The original Suspiria to me is just okay, feels a little dated. I don’t think that [Dario] Argento’s movies are necessarily as alive as some other older movies are, at least not for me."  Yeah, sure.  Not enough super crazy blood bombs, I guess.

The Cabin in the Woods does have a novel concept, but it didn't work for me, and I think the writing and execution were pretty lame.  It has a ton of fans though.

The DePalma set is interesting, and confused.  Even though he didn't pick it, Perkins points out that Carrie is the best Stephen King adaptation.  Personally, I would have it replace Sisters, and I would also probably substitute something else, maybe Phantom of the Paradise, for Dressed To Kill.  I would like to believe that Perkins appreciates Raising Cain as well.

I do appreciate the love for The Hunger, Fire Walk With Me and Dracula.  The last two are especially contentious, but I'm so happy that people are waking up to how wrong those 1992 critics were who roundly dismissed Fire, and I hope that we're finally exiting the fad from the last decade where people were acting like Dracula wasn't the classic it so clearly is.