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Movies I’ve watched

From Hell (2001)

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Night 23 of 31 Nights of Horror

From Hell (2001)

Remember how I said Stephen King didn’t like Kubrick’s adaptation of The Shining? Yeah, that’s mild compared to how Allan Moore feels about ALL of the movies based on his works. Given how often people have taken his ideas and characters and stripped all the meaning out of his graphic novels, I’m not surprised by his reaction, and From Hell is no exception, but it is a really good Jack The Ripper story.

This is probably the most beautiful serial killer movie I’ve ever watched, and I mean beautiful in the filthiest way. This film looks, sounds and feels exactly the way I imagine London’s East End did in 1888. It’s obvious how much time and care went into the costuming, set design and all the extras to make Whitechapel look like the densely populated slum it was. It all makes the city look alive and real, but do NOT mistake this tale for historical re-telling of the world most famous serial killer.

This is more of a Hollywood telling of a conspiracy theory than a serious attempt to portray the facts of the killings. A lot is omitted and many ‘facts’ are fabricated entirely. It’s a good story, and is entertaining, but it probably pissed off serious true crime aficionados almost as much as it did Moore. I’m not sure how I feel about that, personally. On the one hand, it’s a movie, it should be looked at purely as fiction, but when it’s told so well, you KNOW there is a significant percentage of the population that is going to believe everything in it is true, like so many people who’s beliefs about the Kennedy assassination were informed entirely by the Oliver Stone movie.

The acting is great. Johnny Depp, Heather Graham, Robbie Coltrane (I always love when he’s in a movie and will not watch anything HP related if he isn’t playing Hagrid), Ian Richardson, Sir Ian Holm (there are scenes were you can see the foreshadowing of a ring influenced Bilbo at the end), the cast is absolutely stacked and everyone does a great job, but Heather Graham is seriously mis-cast. Don’t get me wrong, she did a great job, and I think she’s a wonderful actress, she just didn’t fit the setting and the character. I know why they cast her, when they decided to fabricate a love story between Inspector Abberline and Mary Kelly, they needed an actor as beautiful as Johnny Depp to pair him with, it’s just that she doesn’t blend in with the other victims, or even the city itself. I’ll let the actual Brits comment on how convincing her and Depp’s accents are.

As a movie, I loved it. As someone deeply interested in the Ripper murders, there are more accurate tellings out there. I’m on a Johnny Depp kick, should I watch Sleepy Hollow next? Probably not, I don’t remember enjoying it. Maybe Sweeney Todd? Does a movie from 2007 fit within the time-frame of the challenge? Oh wait, I know the perfect movie…

Demon Seed (1977)

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Night 22 of 31 Nights of Horror

Demon Seed (1977)

This movie is surprisingly ahead of it’s time. It’s about an AI that takes control of a smart home and kidnaps the woman who lives there, and it was made almost 50 years ago. Although, people back then obviously thought we’d be further along technologically than we actually are. This smart home was making drinks for people and opening doors, while I still can’t get Alexa to just remove the picture-in-picture on my Fire TV after my Blink doorbell rings (all three are Amazon products by the way).

At it’s heart, Demon Seed is a mad scientist/monster story a la Frankenstein, set in the budding computer age. I loved the initial robot body that Proteus builds for itself. It shows imagination on the part of the writers to not go the obvious humanoid route, and instead a collection of interconnected triangles that allowed it to re-configure it’s shape. TARS from Interstellar reminds me of it in a way.

The movie was well done and I enjoyed it, but I didn’t love it. I’m not sure why exactly, but I didn’t get as strong a feeling of menace from the AI as I should. Many of the scenes are disturbing, but… I don’t know. I can think of other films with computer villains that felt far more unsettling and creepy, like HAL from 2001 or GERTY from Moon. Maybe it was the lighting, the editing, pacing, the voice acting? Maybe all of it. It wasn’t bad, don’t get the wrong impression, I just felt, in comparison to other movies I’ve seen, it could have been stronger.

Demon Seed is currently streaming for free on Tubi in Canada, so you can check it out for yourself if you feel like it.

The Ninth Gate (1999)

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Night 21 of 31 Nights of Horror

The Ninth Gate (1999)

Before the re-watch, I remembered I liked this movie, but I had forgotten how unsatisfying the ending was.

The film stars Johnny Depp as an amoral dealer in rare books. His character is kind of a dick and he plays it well. He’s hired by and even bigger dick (Frank Langella) to track down and compare two copies of a very rare book to his. The book is said to be able to summon the devil and Frank’s character thinks only one of the three is genuine.

The good. Johnny Depp, Frank Langella and Lena Olin. Great actors who do a fantastic job in this movie. I enjoyed that it plays out like a mystery and detective story all about books. I also liked the sense of dread and menace that runs through almost the entire film. From the moment Dean meets with Boris, the audience is made to feel suspicious, then anxious, nervous, paranoid, mimicking Johnny Depp’s character. The viewer never feels safe or relaxed. Even the lovemaking scenes are tense. You’re not aroused because you KNOW something is off about these women. It’s a masterfully told story.

The bad. Roman Polanski. I hate that such a terrible person still evades justice and continues to live his life free of consequences.

I’m also not a fan of the ending of the movie. Unless I missed a lot, it’s kind of ambiguous.

*Spoiler Time*

Who was The Girl? Was she a demon, an angel, Lucifer? Was the whole thing about leading Dean through the gate, Lucifer never wanted Boris in the first place? Were the Ceniza brothers part of the setup? Did the gate actually lead to hell? Was it SUPPOSED to be this confusing or did I miss signs while watching? Was this supposed to lead to a sequel? I don’t mind when a story doesn’t answer all our questions, or when the ambiguity leads to meaningful discussion among the viewers, but this was too many unanswered questions.

I’m kind of in the mood to watch From Hell now. Not sure if it fits this months theme or not.

Ginger Snaps (2001)

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Night 20 of 31 Nights of Horror

Ginger Snaps (2001)

In 1985 I watched the Michael J. Fox comedy Teen Wolf. I loved it and did for a long time. Ginger Snaps is like the anti-Teen Wolf and it is soooo much better. Both are coming of age movies about outcast teens that become werewolves. Both have scenes with sports in them and both movies star Canadians, That’s pretty much where the similarities end.

This is another film that I had heard mentioned a lot over the years, but never watched. I could say I don’t know why I avoided it, but the truth is probably misogyny. At it’s core this is a story about high-school, teen girls and menstruation and I didn’t think I wanted to watch a movie about any of those things. I was wrong, and I wished I had watched this sooner.

My favorite thing about Ginger Snaps is the realism. No, I don’t believe werewolves are real and this is an accurate depiction of them, I mean it feels like the filmmakers started with the premise, “If my sister and I are out walking at night and are attacked by a strange animal, how would we react?” and everything flows from that. Their actions, reactions, the way they talk and behave are all natural and believable. That’s a big pet peeve of mine, when I think characters aren’t behaving like a reasonable person would, it pulls me right out of the story, so at the start of the film, I didn’t think I was going to like it, because I didn’t like Ginger and Brigitte.

Why are they so angry? Why are they so mean to their parents? Why do they hate life so much when they don’t seem to have anything to complain about? But that’s an old person’s instinctual response to teenagers. I see it a lot in people my age. We’ve forgotten how it FELT to be that age. What seems trivial and unimportant to us now in hindsight is the entire world to them. When I think back to how my kids were in their teens, how my grand-kids are now, the Fitzgerald sisters are 100% believable.

For a low budget film, it looks fantastic. Google says the average studio movie in 2001 cost $47.7 million, Ginger Snaps had only 4.5 to work with, which is $1.4 million LESS than the GOAT of werewolf movies was given in 1981. A lot of that I think can be attributed to director John Fawcett choosing to go far all practical makeup and effects. If they had used CGI it would have either eaten up a lot of the budget, or they would have had to settle for less or poorer quality. Going practical and keeping things dark worked very well.

I shouldn’t have slept on this film for so long, and I think it’s a lesson to be more open minded. The question arises though, do I watch the sequel? I haven’t had a lot of luck with sequels this month, especially with movies I really enjoyed.

Suspiria (1977)

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Night 19 of 31 Nights of Horror

Suspiria (1977)

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.

The Shining (1980)

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Night 18 of 31 Nights of Horror

The Shining (1980)

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.

Scanners (1981)

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Night 17 of 31 Nights of Horror

Scanners (1981)

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.

Possession (1981)

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Night 16 of 31 Nights of Horror

Possession (1981)

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.

Poltergeist II: The Other Side (1986)

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Night 15 of 31 Nights of Horror

Pltergeist 2: The Other Side (1986)

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.

Poltergeist (1982)

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Night 14 of 31 Nights of Horros

Poltergeist (1982)

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.