The only thing I knew about this movie before watching it was that it was set at a ballet school, and I only knew that much from the promos released when the re-make came out in 2018. Unlike a lot of the other films I’ve watched this month, I’d never even seen the box for it at any of the video stores I’ve worked at.
Written and directed by Dario Argento, the look of Suspiria is unlike any horror movie I watched before. Most other films in this genre are dark and somber, but Suspiria is filled with bold vivid colours that dominate the scenes. The play of light and shadow is fantastic and does a lot to set the tone and mood. More so than the music, which I found too loud and confusing. It was filled with moans and wails and I often couldn’t tell if it was the music or something that was in the scene.
As gorgeous as the cinematography is, the visual effects don’t hold up as well. The blood is a bright cartoony red that no one could ever mistake for the real thing and there is a scene with a bat that looks exactly like the black tennis ball on a string that it probably was.
I still enjoyed it overall, and I find myself wondering if this may be a case where the remake actually improves on the original, but I may wait for next year’s marathon to check it out.
I mean… It’s The Shining. Not a lot for me to add that hasn’t already been said many times about this film. In the forty years since it’s release, there have been countless articles and interviews related to it, research papers, essays, probably a few doctoral thesis as well, not to mention all the books about Stanley Kubrick that have been published. As a lifelong Stephen King fan, and someone who started reading his books at an age modern parents would probably find shocking, I’m going to give my impressions about the movie from that angle.
When people compile lists of favorite horror movies, or even greatest films of all time, The Shining is always there, so it was fascinating to me that when I opened the Wiki page for this movie, I saw that that was not the case when it was first released. Reaction wasn’t just mixed, Kubrick and Duvall received nominations at the very first Golden Raspberry awards for this production. I think both were undeserved.
Remember back when I reviewed Sleepaway Camp 2 and I wrote how important music and sound was to the feel of a movie? This is the absolute perfect example of what I meant. From the very first scene when the movie opens, the musical score by Wendy Carlos and Rachel Elkind sets the tone. It is ominous and foreboding, despite the beautiful scenery of a mountain road winding through Montana (not Colorado as we are meant to believe) the audio cues fill us with a sense of dread, setting your expectations for the next two hours.
Google’s AI tells me there are over 77 books about Stanley Kubrick out there. AI lies a lot, but in this case, it’s probably not far from the truth, so if you want more in depth opinions on him as a person and as a filmmaker, you have plenty of options, but my opinion as someone who is going just by surface observations, is that if you take my complaints about the other 17 movies I’ve reviewed this month and fix them, you’ll wind up with a Kubrick film.
The soundscape, the imagery, the beautiful shots done with the newly available Steadicam, the natural dialogue and realistic character behaviours. It all just works. So why didn’t Stephen King like this version of his work? You’d have to ask him for the definitive answer, and I suspect as the years have passed, his stance has probably mellowed some, but I think it came from his inability differentiate between what works on paper and what works on screen. The thing I’ve always loved about King’s works is his ability to create characters you care deeply about. He then does horrible, horrible things to them which puts the reader through an emotional wringer. Part of what makes the people in his stories unique and endearing are the mannerisms and ways of speaking he creates for them (Laws yes!), but many times when you put them on screen, and have the words come out of a real humans mouth, they just sound odd and unnatural.
Books, because everything takes place in the imagination of the reader, also have the ability to compress or stretch time in a way we don’t notice while reading. This is very apparent in the 1991 TV mini-series version of this book that Stephen King himself wrote and produced. There is a scene where Danny is being chased by his father, they stop, have a conversation, and then the chase starts up again. That works in the pages of a book, but comes off as jarring and unrealistic when played out in real time for a viewer. Some things just don’t translate well from paper to film and some things need to be cut for time. As cool as the topiaries were in the book (they freaked me out and I’m sure were Steven Moffat’s inspiration for the Weeping Angels) they don’t add anything to the story or characters in an already 144 minute film.
One change the celebrated horror author and I both didn’t like *SPOILER ALERT* was the killing of Hallorann. In the book, he’s the one that rescues Danny and Wendy, he does too, indirectly, in the film, but they spend a good amount of time showing him being contacted by Danny, trying to reach Wendy by phone, calling the police, flying to Colorado, renting the Snow Cat, driving to the hotel, only to get killed as soon as he arrives? With no impact on the story except to deliver a car? The movie was already pretty long, it could have been trimmed and tightened if the getaway vehicle had simply been provided by a nameless sheriff’s deputy sent to check on the family when they became unreachable by radio. There was no need for Dick to die, unless Kubrick was trying to subvert our expectations, or simply for shock value after all the buildup of him coming to the rescue. I don’t know, but it’s the only thing I didn’t love about the movie.
Still a great film experience. Still holds up well, and a re-watch has put me in the mood to watch Doctor Sleep, the sequel I have never seen or read, but it’s not an old movie and doesn’t fit with this months challenge so I won’t be writing a review on it… yet.
For the longest time, I thought this was a Stephen King story. There’s just something about it that made me associate it with him. Probably the similarity between the “The Shop” and the company in Scanners that was producing a drug that gave people mental abilities. That’s not a spoiler by the way, it’s pretty much explained right at the beginning.
This movie is all David Cronenberg though, well, Cronenberg inspired by William S. Burroughs. It’s not as strange as Naked Lunch or eXistenZ and I’m not really sure why it’s considered a horror. The movie is more unsettling than it is scary, but it’s still really good.
It has been a long time since I‘ve watched Scanners and I had forgotten most of it, except the imagery of the people using their powers. I think that’s the thing about David Cronenberg’s movies, the vivid mental pictures that get burned into your memory and haunt you.
I’ve been a comic book nerd most of my life and this film is one of the few times I can recall mental telepathy being shown as an almost physical act, both the scanner and victims emote and struggle. It’s also not a passive thing, it’s an act they have to wilfully engage, which I guess is why two gunmen are able to get the drop on a literal room full of psychics.
Michael Ironside takes a lot of the credit for this movie staying with me for so long. His performance is fantastic. Actually, I’m trying to think of a movie with him in it that I didn’t enjoy and am coming up blank. There probably is one or two, nobody has a perfect track record of picking their projects, but I think it says a lot about the man’s talent and charisma that I only remember the good ones.
It’s not a perfect movie by any stretch, I feel Cronenberg is a lot like early William Gibson in not knowing how computers work and just making things up because it sounds good. I’ve worked in telecom for thirty years and I can guarantee, that even with psychic powers, there is no way a pay phone will explode like that unless you pack it with C4.
For an older movie, the effects hold up really well. The story has some pretty big holes if you start thinking about it, so it’s best not to get too analytical and just enjoy the ride.
In 52 years, I have watched a lot of movies. Some of them have been very bizarre. I’ve seen The Forbidden Zone, A Clockwork Orange, Killer Klownz from Outer Space and most everything David Cronenberg has directed. Possession is right up there as one of the weirdest movies I’ve ever watched.
The people in this movie act weird, they stand too close, they don’t look at each other when they talk, they flail against the walls, they say the most bizarre stuff that nobody else in the scene reacts to, their characters are inconsistent from one scene to the next and I’ve watched Sam Neil sit in a chair in plenty of other movies, so I know he can do it without looking so manic, so this all must be intentional on the part of the director.
It has to be an art style I’m unfamiliar with. A film student could probably tell us it’s part of the neo-brutalist-hyper-realism school or something, but it just confused the hell out of me. Judging from the high ratings on almost every platform, 74% on The Movie Database, 7.2 on IMDB, 85% on Rotten Tomatoes, I’m one of the few viewers who didn’t understand it.
The blurb for this movie describes it like this “A woman starts exhibiting increasingly disturbing behavior after asking her husband for a divorce. Suspicions of infidelity soon give way to something much more sinister.” So you’re probably thinking what I was. She’s possessed. It’s going to be a film about demonic possession (I mean it’s in the title, right?) that sounds cool. No. That’s not what it’s about at all. I’m still not sure what it WAS about. The closest I can come is that it is an allegory for the possessiveness we feel towards people we are in a relationship with. Maybe. I don’t know, I’ve been thinking about it most of the night and I’m still baffled by what I watched.
I just spent about ten minutes trying to explain to my wife all the strange and incomprehensible weirdness that is Possession, but I’m not going to do that here. Why? Because despite everything I’ve said so far, I didn’t hate this movie. I’m not going to say I liked it, or that I’ll watch it again, but I also don’t want to deprive anyone else of the experience of watching it unspoiled. It is bizarre and hideous in a fashion that makes you unable to look away.
I want to start of by saying, the movie is not as bad as the Rotten Tomatoes score would indicate. I mean, it’s nowhere near as good as the first movie, but it’s not terrible. I think people were just disappointed when they compare it to the original, and they used the rating system to reflect that.
What went wrong with this movie? Well, nothing really, or maybe everything. You can’t say the effect were bad, they weren’t. You can’t say the acting was bad, it wasn’t. The story wasn’t terrible, although it was just a little harder to believe than the first one. I think it’s more about the crew behind the cameras, and how they changed almost everyone involved from the first except the cast, the head writers and Jerry Goldsmith.
Gone are Steven Speilberg and Tobe Hooper, which are probably the biggest changes and had the most impact, but it’s also a different cinematographer, different editor, producers, production designer, set decorator, makeup, when I compare IMDB credits side by side, not a single person in the art department was in both movies. Film-making is a collaborative effort and when you change so many of the people involved in it, you’re going to wind up with a very different outcome, even if you keep the same actors in front of the lens.
What would I have changed about this movie? If they were going to change so much of the crew, I hate to say it, but I would have changed the cast as well. Make a clean break. Make the story about a new family, maybe focus this time on the researchers going to a new house, or maybe put Tangina at the centre. More Zelda Rubinstein would have been a good thing in my opinion, she’s in far too little of this movie. As much as I loved the cast, Craig T. Nelson and JoBeth Williams are great and Heather O’Rourke a treasure taken way too soon, it’s hard to believe *SPOILER ALERT* their house was built on a DOUBLE graveyard. Seriously? This type of movie requires some healthy suspension of disbelief already, but to ask people to buy that there was a cave with more bodies underneath the cemetery that was already hidden is pushing it in my opinion. Especially when you add that, not only is this family unlucky in where their home was built, but Diane, her mother and her daughter ALL have strong psychic abilities? Pick one, either the land is cursed or the people are the reason the poltergeists are attacking them and following them, asking us to believe both is a little too much for me.
Some of the world-building I didn’t buy into. The first one, the spirits were spirits, they acted by moving and possessing inanimate objects. In this one, there is a lot of physical manifestations. I get wanting Julian Beck in as many scenes as possible, he’s the best thing about this film, but if he can appear and walk around whenever he wanted, why did he need Carol Anne? It seemed like the effects people had cool ideas they wanted to try (the braces attacking Robbie, the mescal worm) and the writers found a way to try and work them into the story, instead of the effects being needed to tell the story.
I hate that is sounds like I’m bashing the movie, that’s not my intention, I think, like a lot of the people voting on RT, that I had such strong feelings about the first film, being let down by the sequel makes you just a little angry about what could have been.
The first time I watched this movie I was fairly young. So young that I didn’t realize until this re-watch, that it wasn’t a normal cigarette that JoBeth Williams’ character was smoking in bed. Sometimes, as an adult, when you watch a movie that you have fond memories of as a child, the experience isn’t as good as you remember. I had this happen with a few films, Highlander, The Crow, The Last Starfighter and I was worried that would be the case here. I was very happy to learn it was not. This movie still surprised me, shocked me, scared me, for a story over thirty years old, it holds up remarkably well.
I always thought Steven Speilberg directed this movie. He produced it, and he co-wrote it based on his own story, but it turns out Tobe Hooper directed it. Yes, that Tobe Hooper. Texas Chainsaw Massacre Tobe Hooper. I guess I was surprised because for a guy who is best know for a movie about a family of cannibals, and who’s signature character wears a mask made of human skin, he does an amazing job of being more subtle here, reminding us of what it felt like to be a child in our bedroom at night, afraid of clowns, lightning, monsters under the bed and in the closet.
I like how the movie is structured most of all. It starts out spooky and the family passing off Carol Anne talking to the TV in the middle of the night as just a child maybe sleepwalking. Then they think it’s fun when strange things start happening with the furniture and eventually becomes more menacing and malevolent. Then when you think everyone is finally safe, you find out they aren’t. It’s a roller-coaster that is aided significantly by Jerry Goldsmith’s music.
Some of the green screen and stop motion isn’t as convincing in a high def transfer, especially when you are used to modern CGI, but it isn’t glaringly bad and the scenes that are dated are brief. Modern TVs don’t show static like that anymore, so it may puzzle younger first time viewers, but overall the makeup and effects are done well enough that they still look good. I’ll admit, I was still repulsed and a little freaked out when that guy rips off his own face.
Also, I can’t not mention Zelda Rubinstein. That woman adds sooo much atmosphere and character when she shows up, the movie would not be the same if any other actor had been in that roll.
If you’ve never watched it, or it’s just been a long time since you have, I would strongly recommend it this Halloween if you’re in the mood for a great ghost story.
A product of the Roger Corman factory that produced incredibly successful directors, Joe Dante has made some of my most loved movies. Gremlins, Innerspace, Explorers and the underrated Tom Hanks masterpiece, The Burbs. Until now though, I had never watched The Howling.
I don’t think it’s giving away anything to say this is a werewolf film. I mean, the title is The Howling and just look at that poster. What’s cool about this movie is that it starts off making you think it’s about one thing, but transforms (like a werewolf, get it?) as it goes into being something else. Bottom line is I enjoyed The Howling, but I can’t discuss it more without spoiling things sooooo.
SPOILERS BELOW
Things I loved. Reporters. A lot of monster movies are about people in their teens and early twenties who inadvertently wind up victims of atrocities no one would ever believe. The main characters in The Howling are journalists who actively seek out the facts. That was a nice change.
I also like that it begins leading you to believe the story is about a werewolf serial killer, when it was more about a serial killer who just happens to be a werewolf, and part of a larger community of wolves.
My biggest complaint about the film is that I wish it had been longer, as I have a lot of questions that either weren’t answered, or maybe I just didn’t understand. The killer, for instance. How did the community feel about him? Was he an anomaly? Were they upset that he drew so much scrutiny down on them? His actions are never really discussed. You get a small glimpse that there is a schism developing between the traditionalists and “The Doctor’s” way of thinking, but it’s very brief and we aren’t shown much of their way of life. Why did the old man want to throw himself on the fire? Was he lamenting the loss of their traditional way of life? Was it dementia? Was he just a drunk who seeks attention by doing this all the time? Why did Patrick Macnee’s character bring Karen and Bill there in the first place? Was it to convert them, because they later plan to just kill Karen and make it look like an accident. I know that theatres didn’t like long movies back then, but I would have loved another thirty minutes to really flesh out the wolves and their story.
The special effects were good, but… An American Werewolf in London came out that same year and their werewolf transformation scene was mind blowing in comparison.
The ending was fantastic. I know I put a spoiler warning up already, but if you really haven’t seen the movie yet… no, you know what, I was going to tell you to stop reading and instead I’m just going to end the review. Go watch the movie.
You can’t go wrong with a John Carpenter movie. Halloween, Christine, Escape From New York, Big Trouble in Little China, Dark Star (okay maybe not Dark Star), Prince of Darkness, They Live (campy but fun) and my personal favourite horror The Thing.
This one just didn’t click with me though, and I’m not sure why. There’s nothing I can put my finger on that really stands out. It’s a cool ghost story, which is a nice change from zombies, demons and vampires. It has a great cast, may be the first time I’ve ever seen Jamie Lee Curtis and her mother in the same movie, the dialog is natural and all the characters behaviour realistic. Maybe the cast was too big? It didn’t seem to have an anchor character and jumped around a lot. I assumed it would be Adrienne Barbeau, but she spent most of the film alone.
I think the issue this time was me. I was really tired and not in the mood to watch a movie, but did it anyway for the challenge. I think I’ll need to see this film again on a day I’m in a better mindset. Maybe I’ll do a John Carpenter marathon.
Despite the good rating on Rotten Tomatoes, The Fog doesn’t seem to be in high demand. I could only find it on Amazon and Apple TV.
I’m writing this now with twenty minutes still to go in this movie because I’m bored. With more time to work on the script, and a much bigger budget I was hoping Evil Dead 2 would show Sam Raimi’s growth as a filmmaker, but just didn’t like it and I’m obviously in the minority here because the average ratings for this sequel are higher than the original.
Maybe I’m just not the right audience for this one. I liked how the first started sombre and became weird and outrageous at the end. Number 2 starts out weird, then just puts the pedal to the floor and rides the crazy to the end. Obviously some people loved that, well, most people judging by the 88% rotten tomato score, but I preferred the first one.
I get the feeling that Sam Raimi has a love/hate relationship with this series. I don’t know him, and I’ve never heard him talk about the films, but he’s essentially made the same movie three times. While wikipedia says this is a sequel to the first, it tells the same story, minus the three friends that went to the cabin with Ashley and Linda in the original. Without these people the first half of the story is Ash alone, running from the camera, beating on a mannequin head and fighting himself for over 30 minutes. That’s when I got bored and nothing in the second half pulled me back in.
The other thing I noticed was that very early on, they start setting up another sequel. It’s like the filmmakers really wanted to make the third movie, didn’t like how the first ended and wanted to re-do it so as to set things up better for Army of Darkness and did just that, calling it Evil Dead 2. Then of course he let other people re-make it again in 2013.
The increased budget obviously went into the effects. Bigger makeup, whole body latex suits, enormous mechanical trees, even more blood than the first, and this time in four different colours. The camera movement was less interesting this time as well. It’s like with a bigger budget, they focused more on the visual effects side of things than on using the camera itself to better alter the mood and feel of the film
Overall, it was a disappointment to me, given how much I enjoyed, not just the first one, but so many of Sam Raimi’s other movies. Drag me to Hell was great and The Quick and the Dead is one of my favourite westerns, I watch it almost once a year.
You can stream Evil Dead 2 for free with ads on Plex. I’m personally glad I didn’t pay to watch it.
It’s interesting to me how many huge directors got their start in horror films. James Cameron’s first was Piranha Part Two, Peter Jackson made Bad Taste, Dead Alive and Meet the Feebles (while that one’s not strictly a horror, it’s got the same feel) Guillermo del Toro is still making horror movies, even after winning three Academy Awards for The Shape of Water and before resurrecting Spider-man from obscurity, Sam Raimi wrote and directed The Evil Dead, which spawned six feature films and a tv series.
I’ll admit, for a franchise that has become so iconic over the years, I’ve never watched one of the movies all the way through. I’d catch it when it was on tv occasionally, but only in bits and pieces, so this was my first experience of seeing it from start to finish.
It works. Despite the tiny cast of unknowns with little to no acting experience, the minuscule budget, the (how do I say this generously uh, inexpert?) makeup and almost non existent visual continuity, the movie just works.
The film is nowhere near perfect. The face makeup is fine, but instead of body paint and prosthetics on the hands, it looks like they went with what seem to be rubber gloves that actually look like they came from a Halloween store. They even rip at one point with the actors fingers poking through. A movie with a larger budget would have a continuity coordinator. Evil Dead has actors drowning in blood in one scene and then the camera moves and their faces are suddenly clean. Holes in doors become spots of dark paint in wide shots and change shape depending on which side of the door we are looking at, but it just doesn’t matter. Once the action starts, it doesn’t let up until the credits roll.
I think the camera work is impressive. Not the camera equipment itself, it’s obvious there was no room in the budget for a steadicam, as the shaking at one point was almost enough to give me motion sickness, I’m talking about the way shots are framed and the cameras moved. When I listened to the directors commentary on Mallrats, it was pretty clear that critic’s complaints about the static camera shots in Clerks bothered Kevin Smith a lot. No-one can make those claims of Evil Dead. The camera almost never stays in one place, it is dynamic and constantly moving in interesting and unusual ways. Some don’t work, but it is never boring.
Another thing that stands out in my mind is the tone of the film. It’s almost the inverse of what you expect in this genre. So, most movies of this type will start out light and comedic and then grow darker and more menacing as people start dying. Raimi does almost the opposite here. It starts off fairly sombre and gets suspenseful and terrifying early, but then as the violence increases, it grows wilder, crazier and wackier until almost everything is drenched in blood and gore. Sooooo much blood. If I actually believed they put a lot of thought into it, I’d say they wanted to mirror Ashe’s descent into madness visually, but it’s probably just coincidence.
One more way this movie stands out is the departure from the ‘silent killer’ standard. With the exception of Freddy, most well known horror monsters like Jason, Micheal and the others make almost no noise, let alone talk. The demons in Evil Dead almost never shut up. When Linda gets possessed, she laughs more than The Joker and that makes it almost more disturbing.
I think I’ll watch the sequel tonight, if for no other reason than because I’m curious to see how Raimi and Tapert’s film-making evolved in the seven years between them, and given a larger budget. Hopefully the lighting is more natural because everything in this one was unnaturally bright. I mean, it’s good that we can see everything well, but a cabin in the woods shouldn’t look like it’s illuminated by flood lights from a football stadium.
Late to the party, as usual 