The Amityville Curse

The Amityville Curse...1990...91 minutes...R...starring Kim Coates, Dawna Wightman, Helen Hughes, and David Stein...directed by Tom Berry

A group of five friends move into a house that one of them has purchased in order to do renovations, spruce up the place, and make it a lovely place. The fact that the psychic woman got a hunch to buy that house? No, that's fine, no worries. The sealed over room in the basement? No, that couldn't be a bad omen. Nightmares? Ignore those...everything's going to be just fine.

Everything will be just fine if you leave this dog alone, that is. This movie is the 4th in the Amityville sequence; but for a movie that's trying to make it on the Amityville title, there are some fairly pressing issues. One, it's not involved with THE house, but it's set in another house across town. (Apparently this town is just rife with supernaturally active spots.) Two, there's no relation to the original story of the house either. It could have happened anywhere, but slap on the Amityville name to draw the crowds, right?

I might not mind such behavior if the movie was a better movie. It's not, though. The acting isn't believable, the writing is sub-par, and if you haven't figured out who the killer is going to be halfway through the film, you're either not paying attention or completely overthinking it. I will say that the ending is amusing watching the amount of physical abuse one person can take...including a can of hot wax to the face! Ooohh, that's gotta hurt! This assumes you'll make it to the end, and that's not an easy assumption to make.

Well, let's see if the next reviewed movie gets any better. I give this selection 1.5 confessionals out of 5.

NAMR: Writing on a regular basis

As I'm sure many of you are experiencing with the whole NaNoWriMo experience, I have found that making time to write regularly is more of a challenge than I initially thought.  Scheduling on a regular basis has always been a particular bane of mine, and I'm noting that I'm falling behind on my quota here. Mind you, I am not throwing in the towel, though I am a bit more realistic about my chances about actually making it. Well,I knew this would be an extreme challenge, and at least I know where I stand after a month.

There's plenty of room for improvement. :-)

I hope that everyone has had a good November so far, and I hope that you are preparing for a lovely holiday season. More horror on the way!

The Blob (1988)

The Blob...1988...95 minutes...R...starring Kevin Dillon, Shawnee Smith, Donovan Leitch, and Jeffrey DeMunn...modern screenplay written by Chuck Russell and Frank Darabont...directed by Chuck Russell

First of all, I admit that this entry should really have been switched with the last, so at least the two "Blob"s could be back-to-back, but I'm reviweing them as I see them, and my method of seeing movies is occasionally very random. Second of all...Frank Darabont? Really? Like "The Walking Dead" Frank Darabont? Indeed. Surprised the heck out of me.

So, anyways, the plot is much like the original. A strange organism crash-lands near a small town, and gets an attack of the mad munchies.  Only the teens seem to be wise to this gelatinous threat, and of course no one will listen to them. Only this time, the government gets involved in trying to capture the creature. We can trust them, right?

Two things are immediately noticeable as differences...one, people do not get eaten nearly as antiseptically as they did in the 50s. Here, we get to see partially digested snacks floating around in the semi-sentient goo, as well as the effects of blob fluids on the human form. Two, this blob gets a bit more animated...with tentaclish psuedopods, a faux mouth when needed, and the ability to hide in the most...interesting...of places.

Maybe it's me, but I have to admit that the best thing I've seen Shawnee Smith in is a contraption designed to rip her jaw off if she doesn't start carving. It could have been that I'd just seen the original, but I really found it difficult to get involved with the story; and while the updated effects were interesting at times, I got bored pretty quickly. The movie does have its moments; Kevin Dillon has a nice line after he spills a jar about killing the strawberry jelly. The ending isn't horrible either...but again, I just wasn't held.

I'll give the movie 2.5 class rings out of 5...I'm tempted to go lower but I'm giving the movie the benefit of the doubt that I saw it at the wrong time. But really, don't spend money seeing this one.

House On Haunted Hill (1999)

House On Haunted Hill...1999...93 minutes...R...starring Geoffrey Rush, Famke Janssen, Ali Larter, and Taye Diggs (appearance by Jeffrey Combs)...written by Dick Beebe...directed by William Malone

If you've seen my notes on the original "House On Haunted Hill", then you know the basic story consists of a birthday party thrown by a wealthy eccentric at a legendary haunted house. The guests are told that if they spend the night, they get a large amount of money for their troubles. $10,000.00 may have seemed like a large amount of money in 1959, but now a cool million for each guest is up for grabs. Of course, the house has turned into an asylum where the head doctor was nuttier than his patients, if just as homicidal.

Geoffrey Rush plays Steven Price, the wealthy amusement park owner who has gone along with his wife's crazy idea for a party. (yes, this is the Frederick Loren character redone and named in homage.) Even though this movie may not be up to the caliber of other films he has both starred and won awards in, the man still plays the role with gusto. I'm not sure he's our age's equivalent to Vincent Price, but there are few other actors I can think of who would be as appropriate. Famke Janssen steps into the role of plotting wife, now Evelyn instead of Annabelle. The guests are played by recognizable talent, and all of them deliver as well as the movie itself will let them.

Sad to say, the movie really doesn't do much to improve upon the original. Without spoiling the ending of the 1959 movie, the script was trying to stay true to the idea of the original film...but they had to make it predictably different as well. The two threads make the movie a bit convoluted, and inserting some dramatic effects-scenes doesn't help the sense that the story has become a jumbled mess. The very end of the movie didn't make me thrilled either. This said, there's nothing too terribly wrong with the movie...there's just not much too terribly right either.

I'll give it a rating of 2.5 strange display cases out of 5.

The Blob (1958)

The Blob...1958...86 minutes...NR...starring Steve McQueen, Aneta Corsaut, Earl Rowe, and John Benson...written by Theodore Simonson and Kay Linaker...directed by Irvin S. Yeaworth, Jr. and Russell S. Doughton, Jr.

No one ever believes you when you're a rebellious teen. Let's take Steve for an example: he and his girlfriend Jane go driving on the edge of town, looking for where a shooting star landed. They end up almost hitting an old man who has this strange (and alien, let's not forget alien) goo on his hand; but being good kids at heart they take the oldtimer to the doctor. The goo ends up growing, and eating the old man, the doc, and his nurse...but of course no one believes Steve, who's a known hot-rodder. Darn kids trying to save the town....

This movie is one of Steve McQueen's earlier roles, and no one thought that it would be as big of a hit as it turned out to be. (He might have held out for more than $3,000 had he known.)  It's also a prime example of the 50s thriller...sure, everything's dated; and it's hard to take a movie seriously where the threat to the general warfare looks like a gigantic amount of strawberry jelly. It's especially hard to take seriously when you hear the opening theme song. Still, consider the movie a time capsule and an excellent exemplar of teen angst as expressed in popular culture. You gotta love a movie where the teens of the town use their expertise of making noise to get the town mobilized...complete with sirens and air-raid alarms.

Doing my scrounging around on the Internet for tidbits on the movie, I found out that Rob Zombie had been planning to  do a remake of this movie but has apparently dropped the project to work on "The Lords of Salem". Now there's a thought I find more disturbing than the original movie itself....

For the sake of film history, and because you just don't see too many movies featuring a gigantic amount of red alien protoplasm, I give "The Blob" 3 yappy little dogs out of 5.

Session 9

Session 9...2001...100 minutes...rated R...starring Peter Mullan, David Caruso, Stephen Gevedon, Josh Lucas, and Paul Guilfoyle...written by Brad Anderson and Stephen Gevedon...directed by Brad Anderson

A crew of asbestos abatement workers face a challenge in getting a large, abandoned asylum up to code in the time bid for the contract. What's worse, members of the team have their own issues that are causing complications; Gordon, the team leader, has a new baby and hasn't been sleeping well while Hank is dating Phil's ex. One of the team members finds a recording of one of the case histories, a woman named Mary Hobbes with multiple personalities...and things start going downhill for the team as more and more is revealed on the 9 taped sessions of  Mary's case.

There are certain places that have become standard settings for horror tales, especially in regards to the "haunted house" story.  Included under this heading are the large mansions or plantation homes, creepy churches,  dilapidated prisons...and of course the mental hospital or asylum. In particular, this last selection of setting seems rather appropriate; in such a place a viewer is often unsure if the phantoms of the movie are external or internal. "Session 9" is one of those movies that doesn't make it too clear, ultimately leaving it up to the audience to decide.

This movie doesn't have a whole lot of gore, or even effects to rely on...rather relying on the slow buildup of tension as things both get revealed and get unraveled. Like the setting, the characters are all in some state of disrepair...either with perosnal issues, crises, or phobias. It's the story of these people, and of the hospital itself, that will either make the movie work for you or bore you for an hour and a half. While the plot isn't horribly inventive, the execution of it is handled well enough that I think people will be drawn to it. Certainly "Session 9" is a refreshing break from the usual hack and slash, and the talent involved is first rate...if slightly reminiscent of a CSI get-together.

I give this movie a solid 3 wheelchairs out of 5.

NAMR: Gore and desensitization

After writing some of these posts, the thought occurs to me that someone who watches the sheer number of horror movies that I do is quite possibly the worst person to judge how much gore might be appropriate in a movie. When it comes to gruesome scenes, I can only say what I find disturbing and what I think other people might have trouble with. I must admit, thought, that when it comes to movie blood I'm quite jaded. (OTOH,and  you can ask my wife for backup on this...real blood still makes me squeamish.)

I'll share what prompted this post. While watching "An American Werewolf In London", I found myself chuckling at a shot in the Piccadilly Circus attack scene where someone's head goes flying off into the street. Then I caught myself, and just wondered how far from normal I may have come to find something like that funny. Granted, I'm not saying the head looked particularly real...but it's the sort of thing that regular people wouldn't find funny, right?

I msut admit that I've had to build up a certain level of psychic resistance to seeing some terrible things depicted on celluloid. My father passed on his love of the genre to me at a young age, and Fangoria magazine was an early reading staple in my youth. Also, some of the movies I saw at an impressionable age were definitely not what a majority would consider appropriate. Clockwork Orange, for example, should probably not be seen by anyone whose age is still in single digits...but let's just say I was ahead of the curve, and not always by my choice. (Now, I have to admit that I keep finding Kubrick's film funnier and funnier every time I watch it.)

So, is movie violence and bloodshed real to me? Obviously not...if I had let myself see it as real, I think the resulting shock would have been one of those sanity-breaking moments that Lovecraft was so find of writing about. That's not to say I don't flinch occasionally, but my buttons are in different places than some might expect. I expect that other people who watch a lot of horror are in a similar place, but I do have to pause when I think about movies and consider that while -I- wasn't bothered with the various acts that resulted in arterial spray, other people might be.

There's not exactly a point to the post, save to muse on the issue and to help pass on fuller info on yours truly. I do believe that a certain part of transparency is required so that readers can know what my own biases are and adjust accordingly. So there you are...adjust accordingly. ;-)

An American Werewolf In London

An American Werewolf In London...1981...97 minutes...R...starring David Naughton, Jenny Agutter, Griffin Dunne, and John Woodvine...written and directed by John Landis

American students are known for taking trips across Europe, and two (David and Jack) are hiking up in the northern country of England. Of course, they don't listen when people warn them to stick to the roads and avoid the moors. Bad choice. They get attacked by a wolf...killing Jack and wounding David; a wolf that turns human when it is gunned down by the local villagers. David recovers in a London hospital, but he's plagued by strange nightmares and visions of Jack, who's looking much worse for wear being undead and who is encouraging David to kill himself. It seems Jack's soul is stuck in Limbo and can't move on until the werewolf's line is destroyed... and David is due for some changes in his life on the next full moon.

One of the things that will keep this movie as a feature to be revisited is the werewolf transformation scene as done by Rick Baker's effects...when having to change a man into a beast couldn't be done with enhanced computer effects.  At the time, the effects were revolutionary and even now they're impressive...especially when the amount of work and possible discomfort for the actor is considered. Another factor in how well the movie stands up is Landis's deadpan writing; some of the conversations with David's victims are both humorous and just plain disturbing.

If you like werewolf movies, "American Werewolf" is considered one of the classics. If you like blood and gore, there's plenty of that included...especially in the attack in Piccadilly Circus. I'm not sure that the movie is something for everyone; a certain amount of black humor is required to really get into it...but it's certainly worth watching if you have the time and the inclination. I give it 3.5 pentagrams on the wall.