October Movies - Week 5

Good Afternoon Ladies & Gentlemen,
 
It’s October... well, I guess November now!!! You know what that means… Izzy goes a little crazy with decoration for the house so that two humans, three cats & a sh*t ton of rats, ladybugs and box elder bugs can see them because we’re socially distanced (and nobody wants to come visit anyway). We’ve also decided that we’re going to try to watch 31 horror movies in the month… though we’re not restricting ourselves to new horror movies like other people out there. Izzy’s not a fan of gore and… we just watch a bunch of movies already. No time to waste on crap unless it’s something we wanted to watch for a long time… or rewatch. So on that note, here’s how the next week of that has gone thus far…
 
Oct 29 – Ghost Ship (2002)
 
So we were on a lovely road trip through Grand Teton National Park, Yellowstone & Lava Hot Springs (that Izzy will tell you more about in great detail on her blog) when one night we were flipping through the channels… and found this movie which I hadn’t seen in forever & only remembered one thing… a taught cable cutting through HUNDREDS of people. Yes, it’s one of those early 2000’s masterpieces from director Steve Miner and starring… a lot of people that I didn’t know at the time but look at them now… like Emily Browning & Karl Urban in smaller roles, along with Marianna Margolies, Isaiah Washington, Gabriel Byrne & others. Anyway, it’s about a ship salvage team who get wind of a cruiseship that was thought to have been lost decades ago, but suddenly pops up near them… and it’s their one last big job. You know how this goes, right? Hijinx ensue…
 
Rating – 8/10 – Yes, stupid decisions are made & the effects do NOT hold up… but it’s dumb fun if that’s what you’re looking for.
 
Oct 30 – The Brain (1988)
 
Speaking of dumb fun, I had never heard of this movie before it was recommended to me by Amazon Prime… which probably tells you about my viewing habits more than anything else… but it’s an 80’s horror movie about an evil scientist (David Gale from “Re-Animator”) who is brainwashing audiences on public TV with the help of an alien organism that looks like a brain… until it feeds and grows and has like the face of a Critter as well. Well, of course the only person that can save us is a local teenager who the alien doesn’t seem to affect… and hijinx ensue.
 
Rating 8/10 – Great campy 80’s horror fun… and you really don’t know what’s going to happen next.
 
Oct 31 – Halloween 3: Season of the Witch (1982)
 
It’s Halloween… so we had to watch the best one! That’s right… drunk doctor Tom Atkins takes some time off from his job & family to go investigate why some dude set himself on fire & exploded in a car after defacing (like removing the face of) some raving lunatic at his hospital… oh & investigate with the defaced dude’s possibly teenage daughter involving a road trip to Santa Mira, a fake town where they make popular Halloween masks, sticky toilet paper & hilarious dead dwarf gags. That being said… I love this f**king movie! Obviously super inspired by John Carpenter, though directly by buddy Tommy Lee Wallace, and the jingle can wear on you… but the craziness & how preposturious it gets hits me in the sweet spot every time.
 
Rating – 10/10 – Mandatory Halloween viewing
 
Nov 1 – The Green Knight (2021)
 
Keeping it going into November, we finally got a glance at the new release Arthurian tale that oddly enough came out during our King Arthur Month… but we weren’t heading to theatres to watch it. Honestly, I’m really f**king glad we didn’t. Everybody that I’ve heard talk about this movie was either “It’s the greatest movie this year” or “It’s stupid sh*t & I was bored” which always gives me “Midsommar” vibes… and I can’t f**king stand Midsommar. Wicker Man (2006) did it better and everybody hated it (except the cool cats). Anyway, this movie is about the young knight Gawain (or Garwin as they say in the movie, played by Dev Patel by the way) and there’s some ridiculous scene about a Green Knight (made out of wood) challenging Arthur & his knights in a friendly “game” of “if you strike me in battle, then you get my power & wealth for a year… but then I’m going to come back & kill you” so Gawain accepts, decapitates the Green Knight, GK picks his head back up & walks away with a wink like “enjoy your last 365 days, G” and then we skip to a week or two before and… I don’t know, drama? Alicia Vikander plays a duel role being sexy as hell… but yeah, I must just not get it… and I’m okay with that.
 
Rating – 4/10 – Not a fan… boring… Alicia Vikander’s hot.
 
Nov 2 – Carnosaur 2 (1995)
 
To wash the Green Knight off my palette, I then decided to watch a movie where my expectations were trash fire… and that’s the sequel to a Roger Corman killer dino movie in “Carnosaur 2” starring John Savage, Don Stroud & Miguel A. Nunez jr. Yup, star studded! Okay, so a team of scientists go to this mining facility where there’s a possible nuclear meltdown & nobody’s answering the phone… and surprise, there’s a bunch of cloned dinosaurs! Do I love cheesy dinosaur movies? OF COURSE! Were the costumes & special effects pretty laughable? Actually not too bad for what I assume is a budget of less than a half-mill. Was it weird that the raptors basically punched people to death until they exploded with blood? Sure… but man did I enjoy this.
 
Rating – 7/10 – Not the best but definitely not the worst… plus dinosaurs!
 
Nov 3 – Die! Die! My Darling! (1965)
 
Another from the Hammer collection that we’ve been going through (I think we’re halfway) and it’s about a young widow who goes to live with her mother-in-law at her estate… and then mother starts going super holy on her because she blames the widow for her son’s death… and then it basically becomes her & her servants locking her into the house, starving her & going all Mother Superior on her. As a naturally violent person born in the age of cell phones & everybody watching, it was difficult for me to not just… I don’t know, push my mother-in-law down the stairs and walk out or something… but it was… okay at setting the stage of suspense.
 
Rating – 7/10 – Not my favorite from the collection but worth a watch. Premise has been done better.
 
Nov 4 – Silent Night Deadly Night Part 2 ()
 
Speaking of Mother Superior, I had only heard legend of this movie from other podcasts like What Were They Thinking and spoilers… in December, we’re talking about Santa Claus movies… so I was able to shoehorn this one in on that theme… and Drew from the Reel Feels Podcast is joining us… so it was time to watch it in preparation for a busy holiday season. Okay… why start with Part 2? Because the movie starts off in a psych ward where Ricky, the brother of the killer from the first movie, is talking to a shrink… and basically doing a 45-minute condensed version of the first movie & its incredible slasher kills in flashbacks… so done & saved two hours. Then it starts going into the real Part 2 where… spoiler alert, Ricky talks about his life and indescretions, breaks out & goes on a killing spree. The kills? Great, especially on a budget… and oddly enough, filmed in my homestate of Utah. Check it out!
 
Rating – 8/10 – GARBAGE DAY!!!

Tune in next week for some super fun updates on this stuff!

Love y'all,

Steve