13 FOR HALLOWEEN #13: Halloween

The problem with writing about a film as influential, much-imitated and downright iconic as ‘Halloween’ is trying to find something to say about it that hasn’t already been said. I could probably jot down a quick bullet-point checklist along the lines of:The subjective, prowling POV of the opening sceneDean Cundey’s cinematographyCarpenter’s own score (minimalism at its eeriest)Pre-David Lynch Lynchian small town vibeNow you see Michael, now you...

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13 FOR HALLOWEEN #12: White Light: The Noise

Full disclosure: I’ve somehow never got round to seeing the original ‘White Noise’. I saw ‘White Noise: The Light’ at the cinema because Mrs F was keen on it and it starred Nathan Fillion, who I’d liked a lot in ‘Serenity’ and ‘Slither’. I watched it again a couple of nights ago (it’s a staple of Mrs F’s DVD collection – she also likes Nathan Fillion, which is kind of understandable: dude has the same initials as yours truly and the same kind of...

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13 FOR HALLOWEEN #11: Shaun of the Dead

“You’ve got red on you.”Let’s consider the comedy horror sub-genre. Perhaps the most easy kind of movie to fuck up. Make a straight horror film that doesn’t work and you’ve achieved the comedy unintentionally. Set out to make a horror film that’s funny and you already run into two potential – and oh-so-often blundered into – pitfalls. Either it’s not funny enough, or not dark/horrific/nasty enough.If that’s not enough of a challenge, you then have...

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Contributions, creepy movies and cool dudes

As if the Second Annual 13 For Halloween round-up and my contribution on Fulci’s ‘The Beyond’ to the Italian Horror Movie Blogathon hosted by Hugo Stigltiz Makes Movies weren’t enough! I’m included in a mammoth post on The Film Connoisseur today which brings together four bloggers with a love of horror movies: yours truly, the Film Connoisseur himself Francisco Gonzalez, Shaun Anderson of The Celluloid Highway and Brian Bankston of Cool Ass Cinema. Shaun considers supernatural films from Britain, while I look at similarly themed works from America;...

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ITALIAN HORROR MOVIE BLOGATHON: The Beyond

Posted as part of Hugo Stiglitz Makes Movies’ 2nd Annual Italian Horror Movie BlogathonI don’t have any hard and fast rules when it comes to reviewing a film. In terms of style, content, structure and word length, it’s pretty much a case of however I’m feeling when I sit down at the computer and start typing. Sometimes I start with a plot synopsis, sometimes a contextual remark on the film’s place in the director’s canon, sometimes a personal recollection...

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13 FOR HALLOWEEN #10: R-Point

Vietnam, 1972. A South Korean army base in Nah-Trang receives a static-heavy radio transmission from a platoon pinpointing their whereabouts as R-Point, a barren tract of no-man’s-land marked by a dilapidated temple and a makeshift graveyard. Military intelligence are disconcerted: the platoon went missing, presumed dead, six months previously. The sole surviving member, his face swathed in bandages and still confined to a hospital bed, is interviewed...

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13 FOR HALLOWEEN #9: Hocus Pocus

Real life kind of got in the way today, so here’s a short piece of fluff about a short piece of fluff, just to keep 13 For Halloween on track. There’ll be something better after the weekend … honest!There are three genuinely terrifying things about ‘Hocus Pocus’:1. Bette Midler’s hairdo.*2. Kathy Najimy’s facial expressions.**3. Realizing that, pre-‘Sex and the City’, Sarah Jessica Parker was actually quite fanciable.***The story centres around three...

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13 FOR HALLOWEEN #8: The Reaping

According to Exodus (chapters five to eleven inclusive) ten plagues were visited upon Egypt. The Egyptians assumed that God was a mite pissed off at them.According to Katherine Winter (Hilary Swank), an erstwhile minister who now debunks religious phenomena, “In 1400 B.C., a group of nervous Egyptians saw the Nile turn red. But what they thought was blood was actually an algae bloom which killed the fish, which prior to that had been living off the...

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13 FOR HALLOWEEN #7: Prince of Darkness

The key to John Carpenter’s underrated ‘Prince of Darkness’ is the pseudonym under which he took credit for the screenplay: Martin Quatermass. Carpenter cheekily alleged in the press notes that this personage was no less than the brother of renowned scientist Bernard Quatermass.This latter Quatermass, of course, was the brainchild of Nigel Kneale whose fiendishly inventive and cleverly constructed ‘Quatermass and the Pit’ was an acknowledged influence...

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13 FOR HALLOWEEN #6: P2

Meet Thomas (Wes Bentley). Clean cut lad, a bit nerdy, but polite and thoughtful. Steady job as a security guard in the underground car park of a high-rise office building. Likes Elvis, dotes on his rottweiler Rocky, and gets a little blue at being on his own at Christmastime. Oh, and he’s a got a bit of a thing for career-focused businesswoman Angela (Rachel Nichols).A bit of an unhealthy thing, actually.This becomes sickeningly apparent to Angela...

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13 FOR HALLOWEEN #5: Event Horizon

The horror movie in space is a dodgy concept. Occasionally, a movie comes along that gets it right. That movie is called ‘Alien’. The rest of the time we get things like ‘Hellraiser: Bloodline’ and ‘Jason X’.Paul W.S. Anderson’s ‘Event Horizon’ falls between two stools. It’s a quantum leap from the abject pieces of dross epitomized by Pinhead-beyond-the-stars and Jayce-in-space. But it’s still a good few parsecs away from presenting any real competition...

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13 FOR HALLOWEEN #4: The Unborn

As with ‘Giallo’ a couple of weeks ago, I approached this knowing that it had been roundly peed on by the critics, only to spend the first half wondering why they were being so down on it and relishing the prospect of writing a corrective review.As with ‘Giallo’, the second half demonstrated exactly why it had got peed on and another promising “hey, wow, you really need to check this out” write-up turned to ash and blew away in the cold October wind...

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