The 2002
49 Days of Horror is one of my fondest horror movie related memories. I was living with Tromeric in a shitty,
literally most of the time, basement apartment on north first st. in Yakima. Our upstairs neighbors were morbidly obese,
cockroach infested, prostitutes and the house next to us belonged to a youth
pastor guy who always had Christian hipsters around who would come to our house
to watch horror movies, drink, swear, and smoke cigarettes. It was insane and fun and disgusting at all
times for a while and we watched a ridiculous amount of movies. The 49 Days of Horror was probably the height
of my living there. This was before all
the video stores disappeared and VHS still had a really strong presence. It was a fucking masters course in horror
basically. Every once in a while a
random person would drop in but for most of it, it was me, Tromeric, Gabe Nye
the Science Guy, and the late Jimmy Magguts.
It was simple. From Friday the 13th
til Halloween we watch as many horror movies as possible, tally, and review. This year was the first year we had a Friday
the 13th in September and we lost Jimmy this summer. So it seemed right to give it another
go. Eric has kept up the stamina and
momentum as far as watching and reviewing horror shit we used to have back then
but I definitely haven’t. I still love
and watch horror movies religiously but have been really discouraged by the
horror fare lately. Not to say there
hasn’t been a lot of really great horror movies since 2002 but these days I
usually give a movie about 3 minutes before I decide to turn it off and watch
The Thing or something for the thousandth time. But I know there is tons I’m missing out
on. But to start I’ve been watching
mostly old stuff. Here’s the shit I’ve
watched and written about so far. More
soon.
Poltergeist –
Tobe Hooper
This was the first horror movie I remember seeing. My parents would watch it over and over again
because it was on HBO or something at the time.
It fucking terrified me and is one of the only movies that ever gave me
nightmares. Badass nightmares too. I was five or so and would dream about a
giant Freddy Kruger slashing up the houses in my neighborhood (I wasn’t allowed
to watch Nightmare at five but I had seen the posters and thought of Freddy as
the most terrifying thing in the world) and the pale dick priest guy from
poltergeist would stand on my roof and scream “You’re gonna die in there!” and
I would run inside and my living room would be a movie theater and my family
would be watching static with 3D glasses on.
I had this dream every week until HBO changed their line up. Despite it being terrifying I loved
Poltergeist. It is still me favorite
haunting movie of all time. Fuck Spielberg
but he brought a financial and technical weight to the film that made it a
perfect American horror narrative. Toby
Hooper was and is certainly capable of making Poltergeist alone. Texas Chainsaw is still the greatest American
horror movie to date in my opinion.
Spielberg just had to tap that.
And they made something wonderful.
But of course Steve never called…
5/5
Eric Walter
So this isn’t a horror movie. It’s a documentary about the oldest kid from
the actual Amityville Horror and how he’s been doing the last 35 years. He’s not doing very well. This movie is really intense and focuses
almost exclusively on Daniel Lutz. He
seems to live in his garage and chain smokes, takes us to therapy, threatens
the documentarians, and makes it very clear that his step-dad was a sociopath
who abused him and his family and fostered an occult delusion that was
perpetuated by the press, media, and mediums.
He doesn’t say this himself. He
defends his accounts of the haunting viciously.
Either shutting down or exploding if anyone asks an even remotely
skeptical question. This is all
interspersed with his accounts of his relationship with his step-father( an
abusive Vietnam vet, who jumped on the darker side of the occult band wagon in
the 70’s) and interviews with most of
the journalists, parapsychologists, and psychologists involved with the
case. At first we get Lutz’ story and
without anyone to contradict him he is pretty convincing. But shit starts to get creepier and creepier
the more we learn about how things really were in the Lutz house. The creepiest interview is with famed demonologist/parapsychologist/ghost
hunter/ whatever the fuck she’s getting paid to pretend she’s an expert on
Lorraine Warren(the Tangina character in Poltergeist is based on this chic she’s
just much more full of shit). I don’t
mean to insinuate that I think Warren is a total swindler. But she spouts a lot of dangerous bullshit
and vindicates a guy who is obviously severely traumatized. At one point she presents what she says is a
splinter of the cross Jesus was crucified on.
Before this she asks if anyone doesn’t believe in God. Daniel freaks out when one of the camera man
says he’s agnostic. From this point we see
the façade of some kind of spiritual warrior who had a show down with the
forces of evil degrade into a very traumatized, damaged, and delusional
man. This is the reality of the “haunting”
phenomenon and the place it holds as horror allegory. There are many correlations between abuse and
hauntings. Just as there are with alien
abductions. It’s a lot easier for the traumatized
brain to create an elaborate supernatural fantasy than to come to grips with
the fact that their father came into their room at night and molested them. And with excessive media attention and an
endless supply or paranormal and religious “experts” to add fuel to the fire we
end up with things like the Ritual Satanic Abuse cases of the 1980’s. That’s why I like ghost movies. They are allegories. Just as Dracula was an allegory for sexual
repression and deviance and Frankenstein represented the real horrors of
society coping with a new wave of scientific discovery and progress, and
Cthulhu is a big penis vagina, the ghost in horror movies is the specter of
trauma and very real human evil.
4/5
Witchfinder General –
Michael Reeves
3/5
This movie is perfect. Everything about it is perfect. The trolls are more amazing and imaginative than anything that has been produced previous related to trolls and the plot is silly but not distracting. Very refreshing fare from Norway. Its about damn time someone do something with the really weird Norse mythology shit. Non-stop horror fantasy.
5/5
Pandorum –
Christian Alvart
One of the most neglected and terrifying genres of horror to
me is space horror. For a really long
time the only truly great space horror flicks were the Alien franchise. Not much else came close to touching the
territory blazed by three of the best mainstream American directors in the last
30 years. Event Horizon was great but in
order to create the illusion of space and tap into all of the truly horrifying
things about space and treasure trove or visual potential you needed a really
really big budget. Pandorum stepped up
with an excellent both psychological and directly terrifying story of the first
colonists who set out for the first habitable planet we’ve discovered. Of course something goes wrong while everyone
is in their and Ben Foster wakes up to find the ship’s power off, his memory
hazy, and Dennis Quaid. He tries to
figure out what is going on and goes on an extremely dark and claustrophobic
journey into the bowels of the ship. It
doesn’t take long for him to discover that the ship is infested with sadomasochistic
mutants who pursue him as he tries to repair the ship. I’ll stop talking about it there in case
anyone hasn’t seen it. Not that it is
really dependent on twists or anything its just a really fun movie to experience
as much in the dark as possible.
Definitely worth a watch.
4/5
House –
Steve Miner
3/5
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