Thursday, October 31, 2019

1077. Wake in Fright

Wake in Fright
1971
Directed by Ted Kotcheff








Happy Halloween! I actually had fun sticking to a theme this month, so I think I will keep that trend going from now on. I won't spoil what I have planned for November, but rest assured, most of you will hate it. Now onto the last horror movie of October: the Australian version of Deliverance.

John Grant is a young schoolteacher who is unhappy to be stuck in the Outback for his teaching assignment. He plans to go to Sydney to see his girlfriend over the Christmas holidays. He plans to travel through a nearby mining town to get the airport, but ends up getting waylaid by the town's eccentric denizens.

This film is notorious for its footage of a very real kangaroo hunt, which is absolutely disgusting to witness even if kangaroos are basically velociraptors. In fact, it ruined the whole movie for me. What can I say, watching a real animal bleed and writhe in agony doesn't do it for me anymore (I'm a vegetarian so don't step to me).

Aside from that, I didn't find any of the characters to be too compelling. They were odd without having much charm, and too dull to be engagingly repulsive. The List is worse than I am at picking out good horror movies, and I sat through 1408.

RATING: **---

Interesting Facts:

This movie was out of circulation for decades because the negative went missing. It finally resurfaced in a Pittsburgh warehouse in 2004. Yay, my city is famous for something, besides putting french fries in a sandwich.

There are 107 occurences of somebody taking a drink. And I don't think it's pumpkin juice.

Tuesday, October 22, 2019

1076. Dead Ringers

Dead Ringers
1988
Directed by David Cronenberg









The Listmakers' only criterion for choosing horror movies seems to be, "will this movie disturb the audience for the rest of their lives?" And Dead Ringers is certainly fitting of this category. Good thing I don't have to get my next pap smear for awhile.

Jeremy Irons plays twins Elliot and Beverly, who are both gynecologists. The filmmakers kind of want us to think Elliot is the evil twin and Beverly is the sensitive one, but they are both rapists, so there really isn't as much of a moral gray area as the filmmakers desire. They share everything, including an actress on the verge of a nervous breakdown.

This movie taps into a latent fear in women that their gynecologists are secretly creepy perverts. I wish that he hadn't dived into the body horror as much as he had. But I suppose asking David Cronenberg to not do something gross with a body part is asking too much of the poor lad. I was much more interested in the psychology of the twins than watching them experiment with "radical" methods. I also wish the drug storyline wasn't included, as I find it more interesting observing sober people's actions. To me, then the explanations for their behavior are more intriguing than "drugs made them do it."

So another upsetting watch for our October creep-out. Ain't Halloween fun?

RATING: **---

Interesting Facts:

Robert De Niro turned down the main roles because he didn't want to play a gynecologist. Is that really the upsetting part of this film?

Based on real life twins Stewart and Cyril Marcus.

Monday, October 14, 2019

1075. Hereditary

Hereditary
2018
Directed by Ari Aster












Yay! An actual horror film to have on the blog in October. I knew nobody was buying it when I tried to sell The Lady Vanishes as a horror flick last week. This is actually an entry from the latest edition. I am afraid that I have grave tidings to share about this edition: it contains The Greatest Showman. That's right; Zac Efron has finally danced his way onto the List. A moment of silence, please.

This is a hard film to summarize, especially when you strive for a spoiler free existence. Toni Collette is a miniaturist who recently lost her mother, whom she had a complicated relationship with. She has a supportive husband in Gabriel Byrne, and tries to help her children, or at least, her daughter, navigate the grief. But it's a horror movie and there's a dollhouse, so you know shit is going to get serious.

When people say a film is a "slow burn," that is usually code for "nothing interesting happens for the first half of this movie." But Hereditary is a slow burn in the best sense of the phrase; I've rarely seen dread built so effectively. Toni Collette is now going to be a permanent fixture in my nightmares.

Some of the images in this movie will stay with me forever, so I wouldn't exactly recommend this, but anybody who loves horror should love this movie.

RATING: ****-

Interesting Facts:

Ari Aster's feature film debut.

Ari Aster requested that Alex Wolff and Milly Shapiro go out to dinner to try to make their relationship as brother and sister seem more organic. Apparently they sat in silence for three hours as Alex tried to get Milly to speak. That sounds about right.


Friday, October 4, 2019

1074. The Lady Vanishes

The Lady Vanishes
1938
Directed by Alfred Hitchcock










Happy October fellow movie buffs. I love to read horror fiction and watch horror movies at this time of the year. Right now I am reading The Master and Margarita (okay, I know not strictly a horror novel but it at least has the devil). I also realize that The Lady Vanishes hardly falls under that category either, but hey, we are just warming up here.

Also want to give a special birthday shout out to Ray, our British expert on all things movie related. Maybe this will be the year he outgrows Bergman!

Anyway, back to The Lady Vanishes. Iris Henderson is returning to England to marry her boring fiance.  She becomes temporarily stranded at an inn in Bandrika (a fictional country; don't embarrass yourself with a google search) after an avalanche blocks the rail line. She has a meet cute with a musician. I won't go into details but suffice to say she is outraged by his caddish behavior. The next morning Iris gets hit on the head, and befriends Miss Froy, who appears to be the quintessential British mother hen. They board a train and when Iris awakes after taking a short nap, Miss Froy is missing. Iris is sure that Miss Froy is real, but everybody else on the train denies her existence. Everybody except a certain mustachioed cad.

Apparently the Listmakers decided that having only eighteen Hitchcock movies was an affront of the highest order, so they added this one in too. I don't deny that Hitchcock is a versatile director, but I feel like his range has been fairly well highlighted already. This one doesn't contain any themes that haven't been well-covered already in arguably better movies of his, like 39 Steps or Spellbound.

That being said, of course I love Hitchcock, so this is a great movie. The pacing is excellent, the plot is full of exciting twists, and the chemistry between the two leads is palpable. Would recommend next time you are in the mood for that perfect old movie.

RATING: ****-

Interesting Facts:

The set for this movie was only 90 feet long.

HITCHCOCK RADAR: Near the end of the movie, at Victoria Station