I've been catching up on a lot of horror stuff on my DVR/OnDemand past two weeks...
Cujo (1983)- First time I caught the King adaption. I never thought it was going to be bad, I just never really got the urge to go out and watch it. I knew what I was going to get, a mutating dog that stalks a mother and her son. Still, it was quite good and better than I expected. The dog effects were a little wimpy at times, but for 1983, I can see where it would have been effective. Dee Wallace (E.T.) was very good, and she went a bit crazy towards the end, and it was a lot deeper than I had anticipated. The relationship between the parents was interesting enough to care about the characters and their fate, and the kid was damn cute, and a pretty good child actor considering what he was dealing with. Better than expected. 7/10.
Silver Bullet (1985)- Man, how did I ever let this slide? Another King adaptation that I frankly had not heard anything about prior to watching it. It stars Corey Haim (Lucas, The Lost Boys), which was kind of strange to see because he was so young at the time, and he is now no longer with us, so it was strange. Also stars Gary Busey, Everett McGill (People Under the Stairs), and Megan Follows. A story about a kid who's paralyzed from the legs down and his deadbeat uncle who try and hunt down a werewolf that is antagonizing the town. It was surprisingly very suspenseful and I wasn't sure who the werewolf was until a good way through the film. The entire town eventually wants to go hunt down the werewolf, and that only leads to them being even more afraid for their lives. Daniel Attias does a great job with this, his directorial debut. He's done a CRAP TON of TV, and I can see why he's been in the biz for so long. Suspenseful, well directed, and he got good-enough performances out of his actors in a genre film. The werewolf effects were good because you don't see much of him. A hell of a film how little it's known about… 8.5/10.
Red Riding Hood (2011)- Did someone mention werewolf film? I saw this like a week ago and I still don't know what to think. Amanda Seyfried (Les Mis, In Time) is caught in a love triangle with two men, one who she's been in love with for years, Shiloh Fernandez (Red, Deadgirl [Which is a phenomenal indie film]), and Max Irons, a wealthy commonperson in her town. There's a werewolf going around killing people when the moon turns red, and who you gonna call when there's something strange in the neighborhood? Gary Oldman, apparently. Yep, Gary Oldman, Count Dracula himself.
. This is the exact tale of The Little Red Riding Hood, except drawn out to a feature-length film. I forgot every so often that it was based on the fairy-tale, until the silly "My grandmother, what big teeth you have," lines come, and they do…
. I'll tell you this. It had me guessing until the very end who exactly the werewolf was. For a while, I thought it was the grandmother, then I thought it was one of her lovers, and then maybe even Gary Oldman! None of the above. It's someone you really don't see coming, and you really wouldn't see coming unless you're very analytical about every scene. It wasn't great, and it wasn't necessarily bad. The werewolf fight scenes are handled very well for a film about The Little Red Riding Hood. It just confuses me because the same woman that directed Twilight made this, and I can see the similarities, I just didn't hate this as much as the first two Twilight films;
. 5.5/10.
War of the Worlds (1953)- Nope, not the Tom Cruise classic,
. I actually had not seen the original War of the Worlds, so I figured it was about time. Gene Barry and Ann Robinson star in the main roles, Gene Barry as a scientist who is asked by the government to study these new lifeforms on Earth, and Ann Robinson as, well, a woman who falls for Gene Barry. The visual effects are great for 1953, and have classic cinematography from around that time. It doesn't hold up well today, but if you can appreciate the craft put forward, it's pretty good. The film drags a bit, and the ending is still as silly as ever, but it's still pretty suspenseful for what it was, and I'm sure in 1953 it was amazing. 7.5/10.
Freaks (1932)- Tod Browning (Dracula) in his masterpiece film in my opinion. I hadn't watched this for a while because I felt like I wasn't quite mature for it. I thought in my younger years, "Babies and freaks? Weird, no thanks." Well, it's obviously much deeper than that. Tod Browning does a great job of showing us that those who mistreat others are the Freaks, and the people with deformities are the ones that are more human. You have every kind of person in this film, from dwarves to quadruple amputees to bearded women to torso-only folks, to siamese twins and mentally disabled adults. The dwarves are the main attraction though, as one of them is the ringleader of a circus, who is also a wealthy man. Even though he has a wonderful partner (who's also a dwarf), he is wooed by a normal woman who is trying to take all of his money. It is her who turns into the freak, who does inhumane things to try and get his money. You don't pity the freaks, you pity her and her accomplice who sink to bottom-dwelling lows to try and swindle the dwarfs' money. It's a great film, and if you can watch early films from that time, it's a classic. 10/10.
How to Make a Monster (195
- Man, what a ride of a film this is. It was well before it's time, and if it were made about 20 years ago, it would have been a hit with how big special make-up effects artists have been. From Tom Savini, Rob Bottin Stan Winston, Jack Pierce, **** Smith, Greg Nicotero, Rick Baker, Lon Chaney, and Ray Harryhausen, this is a film for all of them. A special effects maestro is laid off by a new studio head, and he decides to take vengeance into his own hands by creating a special make-up that controls people, and sends them on killing sprees, essentially having them do his dirty work. It's a film that starts in B&W and it's up suddenly in color during it's climax. It worked for me, and it's a great murder-mystery. I enjoyed it from beginning to end, and although the actual effects aren't great and the script is nothing special, I thoroughly enjoyed it. 8/10.
The Ghoul (1933)- Boris Karloff (Frankenstein, The Mummy) is on his deathbed, and believing in Egyptian immortality, he demands a preparation for his death that will grant him his wish, and Ernest Thesiger (The Bride of Frankenstein) is his man. After his death, his niece and nephew try and go after his fortunes, only to be interfered with by his most trusted assistants, Thesiger and Cedric Hardwicke (Rope, Richard III), both of which who are trying to get rid of one another. It's a decent thriller made to cash in on the name of Boris Karloff, who really isn't in the film all too much. It's one of his weaker films of his that I've seen. 6.5/10
Last?
Ghosts of Mars (2001)- Ugh. I held off on watching this forever because I knew what I was getting into. I knew it was going to be bad. But I love John Carpenter's early work, so I give him my time. I gave it a shot, I tried, and at best it's a mediocre martian film. It's as-if JC was trying to grab elements from Escape from New York (with Ice Cube being Snake, which does not work at all), They Live (with the Martians being the aliens from They Live), and The Thing. It just didn't work. I've never seen so many flashbacks in a film before. Not even Pam Grier and Jason Statham could have saved this crap. Nothing in this worked for me, except the kinda decent make-up effects by KNB Effects. It was cool to see Clea DuVall (Identity, Argo), even if it was in something kinda pisspoor. It's just not something that should've been made. I can't believe it was only made for 28 million, and even mores shocked that it made 14 million. It should've made about a tenth of that. 3/10.
I also watched Legend for the first time recently. The other Tom Cruise epic. Oh my God, that was terrible.