31 Days of Halloween: Tetsuo: The Iron Man - A Surreal Dive into Industrial Body Horror

Tetsuo: The Iron Man - Shinya Tsukamoto - 1989

 

★★★★-Day 8 of the Nightmare on Film Street 31 Days of Halloween Horror Challenge. Body horror night. Went all out with this bizarre Japanese flick with this weird communicable cyborg thing going on. Imagery is beautiful, the “iron man” has this this industrial, modern art thing happening that I dig. Also, what’s a Japanese movie without a lot of phallic imagery? It’s like going to Tokyo on a rare Godzilla-free day. 

 

Not a lot to follow plot-wise. You are just in this world and going with it. That’s not to say it isn’t entertaining. It is funny/fun in a slapstick sort of way. I imagine director Shinya Tsukamoto gets a lot of Cronenberg and Lynch comparisons, but I also get a whiff of Sam Raimi.

 

Overall, well-acted, ugly beautiful, superbly stylish, and extremely interesting, though it kind of feels like a joke that you don’t quite get. Regardless, I can 100% say it is not like anything I’ve ever seen before. 

31 Days of Halloween: Samara Weaving Night: The Babysitter: Killer Queen -- A Bloody Return to Culty Chaos

The Babysitter: Killer Queen - McG – 2020

 

★★★-Day 7 of the Nightmare on Film Street 31 Days of Halloween Horror Challenge. Samara Weaving night. Don’t mind if I do. 

A horror-comedy sequel to The Babysitter, picking up two years after the pre-pubescent star survives a satanic cult led by his babysitter. He must once again fight for his life when the cult he Home Aloned to death returns for revenge, still after his virgin blood.

 

Starts with the survivor virgin dude from the first one (a youngan named Judah Lewis) being pretty much a pariah with his little girlfriend, played by Emily Alyn Lind (she was Snakebite Andi in Doctor Sleep), now with the school’s jocky douche. You'll probably also recognize Ken Marino from Party Down and Wet Hot American Summer and Leslie Bibb from Trick 'r Treat and Talladega Nights. They were in the first movie with slightly bigger parts as the parents of the protagonist.

 

Directed by McG. He did several movies in the aughts that no one cared for. Charlie's Angels movies, We Are Marshall, Terminator Salvation (that’s the one where Christian Bale lost his shit on the director of photography). These Babysitter flicks are dope though.

 

More brutal than the original (decapitations, spontaneous combustions, death by propeller, so forth), this one also has its share of humor. Like trying to bone so he isn’t so pure they want to kill him and what not.

 

I have trouble telling Lind apart from Kathryn Newton and Rose McIver. In this flick, she is also consciously trying to resemble Samara Weaving, who herself looks a lot like Margot Robbie. They are all very beautiful women, but sort of out of hot blonde central casting. There is a pretty sweet Ortega vs. Lind Gen Z “it girl” off at the end. I liked it. But less than the first one. Still waiting on that third one, though. 

31 Days of Halloween: Ghost Story Night: Gothic del Toro

Crimson Peak - Guillermo del Toro - 2015

 

★★★★-Day 6 of the Nightmare on Film Street 31 Days of Halloween Horror Challenge. Ghost story night. Crimson Peak. Would put this in mid-tier Guillermo del Toro. Still rocks though. Huge fan of his work. 

Gist is aspiring author Edith Cushing marries charming baron Thomas Sharpe, who has some weird shit going on with sister Lucille. She then moves to his remote Gothic mansion and uncovers various dark secrets behind the ghosts that haunt the massive, dilapidated home.

 

Cast is solid with great performances. Stars Mia Wasikowska in the lead as Edith. She has really had some canonical, literary parts in her years. She was Alice in the Tim Burton Alice in Wonderland flicks. Also, the title role for the Jane Eyre a decade back with Michael Fassbender as Rochester, Emma Bovary in a Madame Bovary adaptation, stars next to Robert Pattinson in the bananas film Damsel, and the part of Judy in Judy and Punch, which was also insane. She is pretty great. 

 

Others include the Loki man himself Tom Hiddleston as the baron, the always solid Jessica Chastain in her stabbiest role as sister Lucille who is completely out of her mind, and Charlie Hunnam as Dr. Alan McMichael, the other love interest. Also get Jim Beaver as Edith’s dad (he is Bobby Singer in Supernatural). And it wouldn’t be a Del Toro movie without a little Indiana native Doug Jones, he was the fish man in The Shape of Water as well as the fish man in the Hellboy movies. 

 

Love a gothic period piece. The production of this world is the best part about the movie. Totally giving off Hammer Film vibes in that respect, but with the del Toro style. Chastain steals the show with her subdued yet unhinged performance. Pacing and story could have been fleshed out a little bit, and the end is a little over-the-top. Not a classic like Pan’s Labyrinth, The Shape of Water, or The Devil’s Backbone, but it’s close. 

31 Days of Halloween: Jordan Peele Recommends: Dead Again, Kenneth Branagh’s Neo-Noir Reincarnation Thriller

Dead Again - Kenneth Branagh - 1991

 

★★★-Dead Again. Day 5 of the Nightmare on Film Street  31 Days of Halloween Horror Challenge. Jordan Peele night. I chose to watch one of his recommended movies since I’ve seen his trio multiple times. It was alright but forgettable. 

A neo-noir romantic thriller directed by Kenneth Branagh. Definitely feels like one of his movies. He plays Los Angeles private detective Mike Church, who is investigating the identity of a mute amnesiac woman (played by real life wife at the time Emma Thompson) plagued by nightmares. They delve into her past through hypnosis, uncovering a connection to a 1949 murder case involving composer Roman Strauss, who is also played by Branagh. Strauss, who is Jewish, fled Nazi Germany with the help of his maid and her creepy son, was convicted and executed for the murder of his wife, Margaret, played by Thompson. Get a little screen time from Robin Williams, but this is a Branagh/Thompson vehicle.

The story intertwines past and present, revealing secrets and reincarnation themes as Mike and the woman, now called Grace, discover their own links to the tragic couple. It’s entertaining, and the performances are fine. But not a classic by any means. 

31 Days of Halloween: The Underground: Nightbreed: Clive Barker’s Unappreciated Masterpiece

 Nightbreed - Clive Barker - 1990

 

★★★★★-“Everything is true. God’s an Astronaut. Oz is Over the Rainbow, Midian is where the monsters live... And you came to die.” Day 4 of the Nightmare on Film Street  31 Days of Halloween Horror Challenge. Down in the Underground night. Not sure what that means really so I took it literally and used it as an excuse to revisit this old, favorite, Nightbreed, featuring one of the most outrageously cute Boston terrier ever.
 
I adore this movie. Written, directed, and adapted by Clive Barker from his 1988 novella Cabal. My favorite Barker movie, by far, though it is generally less appreciated than Candyman and Hellraiser, which are also classics. I mean, I LOVE Hellraiser, but this holds a special place, seeing it at a time I was devouring horror flicks, circa 1993, when I was in 5^th grade. It was my X-Men, though it literally is not the same film I saw way back when. 
 
It's a bummer we never got sequels as Barker envisioned the project as a “Star Wars for monsters,” but studio interference led to the heavily recut theatrical version, which was meh. Was more of your traditional slasher, causing it to sort of bomb at the box office which meant no further world-building. But I still revisited it every few years, catching every iteration ever released to home media. The Directors Cut is the way too go, by the by. 
 

Getting this version is sort of lost media miracle. Back in 2009 missing footage was rediscovered (the studio knew it existed but didn’t give a shit), leading to the creation of “The Cabal Cut.” Mark Miller, Barker’s producing partner, ended up tracking down two VHS workprints with nearly an hour of additional footage that wasn’t in the theatrical version.
 
I missed this cut when it was making the horror festival rounds, showing originally at HorrorHound Weekend in Indianapolis. I lived in North Carolina at the time. I tried to make it up for the premier, but I was too broke in 2010. Then, after I moved back to Indiana, it was shown at "Mad Monster Party" in North Carolina in 2012. I was a sportswriter at that time and was still too poor to do shit. 

However, the extended 159-minute cut renewed fan interest, leading to the so-called “Occupy Midian” movement, a phrase coined by Anne Bobby, who plays the female lead, Lori Winston, who is the protagonist Aaron Boone’s girlfriend in the film. In 2013 Shout! Factory released a Cabal Cut that was a little different than what was shown at the horror cons. 

 
The 2013 release sparked enough interest that Shout! Factory tracked down the original film elements in the Warner archives in 2014. This became yet another version deemed “The Director's Cut.” The Blu-ray added an addition 20 minutes to the theatrical run time which featured 40 minutes of footage. The whole process was overseen by Barker himself, marking the culmination of efforts to restore the film to its original, intended form. This is now the definitive cut. It is fucking amazing.
 

Gist of the film is Aaron Boone (Craig Sheffer), falls under the care of serial killer Dr. Decker (played by David Cronenberg), who manipulates Boone into believing he's a murderer. Drugged with LSD, Boone attempts to surrender to authorities but ends up escaping and taking refuge in the underground world of Midian, home to monstrous peoples known as “Nightbreed.”
 
Casting is perfect 1990s nostalgia, like the casting of Doug Bradley, who will always be Pinhead to Barker fans. Craig Sheffer plays lead Aaron Boone. He was quarterback Joe Kane in the greatest football movie of all-time, The Program. He has had a steady career, but never achieved A-list status, which is a shame as he steals the show in everything he is in. Also, quick sidenote, Sheffer was in a relationship with all-time beauty Gabrielle Anwar, she was Fiona on the USA series Burn Notice, which is great. They have a daughter together, Willow Anwar, who does some acting herself. They are now divorced, but they are close enough that Sheffer serves as the godfather to Anwar's children from her later marriage, which you like to see. 


Anne Bobby shares significant screen time. She is great and unexpectedly pops up from time to time. She was in the infamous television show Cop Rock which was a pretty heavy police procedural with musical and dance numbers thrown in. I remembered it fondly and then revisited a few years ago and found it utterly unwatchable. She was also in the Todd Solondz film Happiness, a real pick-me-up that featured a lot of rape and pedophilia that earned itself an NC-17 rating. Saw that in high school and really didn’t like it. 
 
Canadian director David Cronenberg is absolutely stellar as the villain. His performance is next level, and damn he looks cool in that mask. It is fan-fucking-tastic. The scene we first see him wearing it, when he kills this middle-aged couple and then climbs the stair toward a crying little boy is some brutal, disturbing shit, especially considering that the violence against the child is implied. 

Obviously I love this movie. If I text or message with you, I've probably sent you the ridiculous clip above where the guy pulls off his own scalp. Bananas and perfect. Great quick representation of the film as a whole. 

31 Days of Halloween: Revenge Night: Damian McCarthy’s Chilling New Revenge Horror, Oddity

 Oddity - Damian McCarthy - 2024

★★★★-Oddity. A film that definitively answers the question of what happens when you put Hannibal Lector in a room with a with delicious looking toes. Day 3 of the Nightmare on Film Street  31 Days of Halloween Horror Challenge. Revenge night. I thought it was better than good but sort of forgettable. I’m a sucker for a cursed object horror flick. This one features a golem type monster that is truly horrific looking. Made of wood instead of clay. Basically, your run-of-the-mill cheap thrill on Shudder, except really well done. 

 
Gist is Ted, a doctor at a psychiatric hospital, is dealing with the mysterious death of his wife Dani. She dies alone in their new country house at the hands of one of his patients. One day her twin sister Darcy shows up at the house, where Ted now lives with new fiancé Yana, with an extremely unsettling haunted wooden mannequin​. 
 
The victim’s sister gives this thing to them as a gift. The couple is sort of like, uh, thanks. When the new gal starts poking around and finds something in the golem’s mouth. The former sister in-law freaks, shrieking at her to “put it back.” Um, excuse me, but you gave me this creepy shit. 
 
Directed by Damian McCarthy. Only his second film. His previous flick, Caveat, is in this same lane, and is also effectively terrifying. He’s got a solid style. I’ll definitely watch his films going forward. 
 
Stars Gwilym Lee as the husband doing some Chekov's bell shit. He's something of a poor man's Joseph Fiennes. Only thing I’ve seen him in is the Queen biopic Bohemian Rhapsody. He played legendary guitarist/cool guy Brian May. Star from Caveat Jonathan French shows up as a psychopath. Never seen any of the other actors, but they are all fantastic, as are their characters. One Carolyn Bracken plays both the sisters. She wins the movie. New fiancé Yana is played by Caroline Menton. Guy named Tadhg Murphy plays the googly eyed mental patient. 
 
Interesting supernatural elements and lots of psychological tension. The mannequin really gets under your skin as it sits there, looking absolutely terrifying. You know some shit is going to go down with that thing. Movie gets pretty chilling in that sense. I actually let out a little scream at one point. But it veers back into cliché nonsense with a twist you see coming a mile away. It’s still fucked up and disturbing. A very good film, but not quite an instant classic. But close. 

31 Days of Halloween: Tim Burton Night: Edward Scissorhands – A Classic if You Can Stomach Johnny Depp's Bullshit

Edward Scissorhands – Tim Burton - 1990

★★★-Day 2 of the Nightmare on Film Street  31 Days of Halloween Horror Challenge. Tim Burton night. Went with Edward Scissorhands, which I haven’t seen in 30 years. Gist is an artificial man with scissors for hands struggles to find acceptance in a suburban community while navigating love, isolation, and prejudice. Blah, blah, blah.

Gonna start with this… I’m pretty over Johnny Depp’s shit, and this is Johnny Depp at his most Johnny Deppiest. This is a glimpse into how insufferable he would become, with his sort of whiny, shuffling shtick. Get the feeling he is the type of guy that believes he knows what it is like to be a black man getting hounded by the cops because it happened to his character in this movie. 
 
But this film has a lot to like, of course. Casting is dope. Alan Arkan is fantastic in everything. Ditto on Winona Ryder. Dianne Wiest really steals the show though. She is kind of the Gen X surrogate mother, always playing a kind somewhat out of her depth mother in flicks like The Lost Boys, Footloose, and Parenthood. Also features Anthony Michael Hall and Kathy Baker, whom I’ve always had a bit of a thing for since seeing her in The Right Stuff. Even get the legend Vincent Price in his final film role.
 
Quick anecdote about Price that I love, John Waters said he used to pretend Vincent Price was his dad growing up, which makes sense. 
 
Style is top tier. A random still at any point in the film and you can 100% tell it is a Tim Burton movie. Plus it is completely original. Not anything I’d seen up to that point. The ending is lame though. Ryder is old, Depp is young and in a world of shit, and then it is over. Cool. 
 
But the film did give birth to the drinking game “Edward 40hands.” You can do this with pretty much any item, sure, but this is the inevitable most hilarious iteration. 

31 Days of Halloween: Horror Anthology: Tales from the Hood, an Urban Horror Classic

Tales from the Hood - Rusty Cundieff - 1995

★★★★★-Day 1 of the Nightmare on Film Street  31 Days of Halloween Horror Challenge. It has become an October ritual for me (and by extension my partner). Starting things off with an anthology, one I have seen many times in Tales from the Hood.
 
Directed by Rusty Cundieff, he also did Fear of the Black Hat and Sprung, it stars Corbin Bernsen, Rosalind Cash, Rusty Cundieff, David Alan Grier, Anthony Griffith, Wings Hauser, Paula Jai Parker, Joe Torry, and Clarence Williams III.
 
A bunch of urban-themed horror stories that tackle issues like police corruption, domestic abuse, racism, and gang violence, all set within a framing narrative of three drug dealers meeting an eccentric funeral director to purchase "found" drugs while he shares eerie tales. Packaged in a slick narrative with solid filmmaking and acting. Doesn’t get much better than that.  
 
First time I saw this was in an all-black theater in 1995. It totally killed. Especially everything with the segment "KKK Comeuppance." Everyone laughed like crazy at everything the racist Southern senator who was a member of the Ku Klux Klan running for governor. He is setting up his campaign headquarters at an old plantation once owned by a slave-holding ancestor that is supposedly haunted by dolls possessed by the souls of the tortured slaves that used to live there. The hilarity had to do with his colorful racist language. It’s nice when he gets his comeuppance. 
 
I totally thought this movie was amazing then and can confirm it holds up now. This is a near annual watch for me. All of the segments knock it out of the park, and the framing story is phenomenal. 

Zoe Kravitz’s Debut is Perfect Slow Burn Horror

Blink Twice - Zoë Kravitz - 2024

★★★★★--Perfect slow burn horror. Saw people saying the pacing was off because of this. I disagree. 

Brilliant flick. Favorite horror movie of the year, so far. Was not expecting a banger from first-time director Zoe Kravitz. Not at all what I expected in general. The trailer is some great misdirection. Got me into the theater and then pulled the rug out. This is part of what makes the film so great, IMO. 

Gist is a cocktail waitress is invited to a tech billionaire’s private island, only to uncover dark and terrifying secrets. That is all you need to know going in. 

 

Stars Naomi Ackie in the lead. Recognize her from her television work in The End of the F***ing World andMaster of None. Also played Whitney Houston in the biopic I Wanna Dance with Somebody. Rest of the cast includes Channing Tatum, Christian Slater, former MTV VJ Simon Rex, Adria Arjona from that Richard Linklater movie Hit Man, Kyle MacLachlan, Haley Joel Osment, Geena Davis, and Alia Shawkat. Great cast of characters that all work phenomenally together. You love the women in this movie, especially the leads, Ackie and Arjona. Go in with just the trailer and you’ll love it. The trigger warning is real, as this movie is super disturbing. There is one scene where a woman is screaming in this horrific, visceral way. 

 

Light spoilers ahead. The ladies are controlled by a perfume made from the flowers that only grows on the island that causes them to forget. Literal snake oil causes them to snap out of it. Inspired by the Lotus Eater’s myth from the Odyssey where people live on a small island and consume lotus plants that cause them to live in a perpetual state of bliss. Their lifestyle causes them to lose all sense of urgency and forget where they came from or how long they’ve been on the island.

 

Forgetting our trauma is a gift. It can be, sure, but you often need that shit to be who you are in the end. 

 

This was the best horror debut I can think of since Jordan Peele dropped that flick in 2017. Love a chick revenge movie. All the women in this are bad ass. Geena Davis is like a Get Out character. She sort of represents an older generation who didn’t get the memo that “women should look out for each other instead of competing.” 

In a Violent Nature: A Brutal, Unique Take on the Slasher Genre

In a Violent Nature - Chris Nash - 2024

 

★★★★★-Over the weekend watched three of what are being touted as this year’s best horror movies. Blink Twice, I Saw the TV Glow, and this flick. Two of them do not disappoint. This was one of the ones that didn’t.One of the best scenes comes at the end. It’s 10 minutes of driving and talking between the final girl and a lady that picks her up. It’s super intense as the whole time you are anticipating something horrible. One this is for sure, this flick definitely passes the Bechtel Test. 

Gist is a Jason Voorhees-esque killer gets accidentally resurrected in the Ontario wilderness by a group of “teenagers”, whom he then stalks and murders. The cool part about the movie is that most of it is from the killer’s perspective in that video game angle. It’s mostly the killer walking around. Get a lot of long shots of the woods, hearing a whippoorwill in the background. 

 

Directed by one Chris Nash, a Canadian, who also wrote the screenplay. Incredibly strong and inventive debut film. Stars all unknowns in Ry Barrett, Andrea Pavlovic, and Lauren-Marie Taylor.

This is a movie that shows you the stuff you don’t see in most slashers. The time in between kills, for example. This consists mostly of Johnny just playing with bodies and such. Dude is a big fan of overkill. Huge fan. 

 

It is a brutal movie. The kills in this are totally nuts. One that is getting a lot of recognition is one of the best of all time. Hard to overstate how cool it was, this coming from a guy who doesn’t really care about such things unless it is truly something extraordinary. Another one is done all in one cut. We see the killer axe a dude in the head and then hack away at it some more for several minutes as the survivor girl watches on in horror. Think when you are chopping

There is a song at the end of the movie that I absolutely loved. This is over the end credits. 

 

I absolutely adored this movie. The audience score on Rotten Tomatoes is a paltry 44%, which is nuts. I get that it isn’t for everyone, but it’ll make my best of list for 2024.