MOVIES
10/24
Fright Night (Rewatch, 1985, Tom Holland, DVD) - 10.0
The guy from Herman’s Head is a teenager named Charley Brewster and he’s dating Marcy from Married with Children, but he never wants to have sex with her because he has ADD and keeps getting distracted by his new neighbors next door who are probably homosexuals, and also probably vampires. Marcy doesn’t believe him, and neither does his friend Evil Ed or TV horror host Roddy McDowell, but they play along with him for awhile, before finally realizing that Charley is right. It’s an insanely good, fun movie with campy and amazing characters, and some awesome special effects. Fucking great.
10/25
Fright Night Part 2 (1988, Tommy Lee Wallace, DVD) - 8.0
Charley Brewster is trying to move on with his life, but the sister of the vampire he killed in the first movie has moved to town with some other vampires, and they’re looking to get revenge. It did something that always annoys me in movies where the lead vampire girl (not necessarily a vampire in other movies) is supposed to be the most beautiful and desirable woman ever, and the main character is completely entranced by her, but they get the casting all wrong, and end up with the actress (in this case, Traci Lind) who plays the apparently ordinary girlfriend being like a billion times hotter than the lead vampire girl. I kind of bought it in this movie because whatever, it’s supernatural, and also because Charley Brewster is so easily distracted by new things that it probably didn’t even matter what the woman looked like, or even if she was a woman, since I guess the exact same thing happens in Part 1 with a male vampire. Anyway, this movie is great. There are vampires who rollerskate and go bowling, sometimes at the same time. It’s awesome.
10/24
The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2 (Rewatch, 1986, Tobe Hooper, 35mm, Bridge) - 10.0
Years have passed since the events of the first film, but the homicidal family is still up to no good, and when one of their murders is inadvertently taped by a radio DJ, Dennis Hopper uses it as a lead to track the family down. From the opening scene, every single thing that happens in this movie is fucking perfect. It’s gory, funny, creepy, disturbing, and seriously fucking gross. Tom Savini has claimed that his best special effects work was in The Prowler, but The Prowler does not even fucking come close to what he did with TCM2. There’s a scene where Leatherface slices off someone’s face (as well as some other random flesh), and puts it over the squirming lead girl’s face, then puts a cowboy hat on her, and I don’t even want to say much more, but the scene continues to escalate into even more horrifying territory, and not only is it amazing just on the basis of what’s going on, but it looks genuinely disgusting. Another sequence that stood out for me was when the girl escapes from the meat room, and is watching the family. Leatherface, Chop-Top, and the father are all standing in a huge room just being crazy. The father is ranting incoherently, something about property taxes, Chop-Top is also screaming fairly incoherently and dancing around with a corpse, and Leatherface just watches them both, looking completely bewildered and unsure what to do with himself. And I realized that this is what the characters are like all the time. They’re only doing this amongst themselves, and I found it to be a fascinating, brilliant insight into the lives of a family of maniacs. It’s true that the movie is also somewhat campy, but for me, this never takes away from how disturbing it is. It is truly one of the most perfect horror films ever made.
10/28
The Last Man on Earth (1964, Sidney Salkow/Ubaldo Ragona, 35mm, Clay) - 7.5
An epidemic has struck the world, turning everyone into zombie vampires, but Vincent Price is immune, and so becomes the last man on Earth. He spends his days staking sleeping zompires, searching for a cure, and reminiscing about the past when he had a family, and spends his nights keeping the zompires out of his house. But then he finds a woman who seems to still be human, and talks of a colony with more humans, which gives him some hope. It’s pretty good.
The Tomb of Ligeia (1964, Roger Corman, 35mm, Clay) - 6.0
Taking place in the English countryside of the 1800’s, Vincent Price meets a woman who looks just like his dead wife, so he marries her, but then hardly spends any time with her because he’s still obsessed with the dead one, who is still haunting him. It was a good story, with some pretty weird stuff in it, but I just couldn’t get that involved in it. It was alright.
10/29
Hausu (1977, Nobuhiko Obayashi, Digital Projection, Rafael) - 7.0
A group of girls with distinct character traits (one knows kung fu, one eats a lot, one plays music, etc.) all go to one of the girl’s Aunt’s house, but the house is haunted and starts killing the girls in various bizarre ways (the best being a girl who gets eaten by a piano). There’s a lot of good stuff here, and I certainly liked it, but I think my expectations were a bit too high. It’s a somewhat legendary cult movie that I’ve heard a lot about over the years, and it ended up not being nearly as crazy as I expected. I’ve refused to watch the movie over the years because it was never available with subtitles, and I don’t even like watching movies in English without the subtitles on. Interestingly, though, I could see how Hausu might actually be a better, and crazier, movie without any context for what the fuck is going on. Not sure what to make of that. It’s also worth noting that I was in kind of a shitty mood while watching, because I was hoping since Criterion had bought the rights to the film and was screening it all around the country, that maybe they had struck up a print. But it was on digital, and even though it was at a fancy, well-respected theater in Marin, the projection quality was fucking garbage, so I should’ve just waited until it hit DVD (I’ll probably watch it again).
BOOK
10/28
Flowers in the Attic by V.C. Andrews - 10.0
After the father of a happy, perfect family dies in a tragic car accident, the mother takes her four children to their wealthy grandparent’s enormous house, but the kids have to hide in the attic for awhile, because the grandfather can’t know of their existence or he’ll kick them out. Awhile turns into years, with their only contact to the outside world being their abusive grandmother and their increasingly distant mother, whose visits become less and less frequent. Incredibly bleak, horribly upsetting story, that just keeps getting worse. It’s fucking amazing, and I can’t wait to read the sequels.
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