Frightday Night Film Recommendations: It’s Halloween!

It’s Friday…

Ahem…I mean Frightday…

And I have some recommendations for you to enjoy this weekend…

Okay…This Frightday’s theme is…

It’s Halloween!

Nothing puts me in the mood for my favorite movie-watching holiday season quite like the opening title sequence of John Carpenter’s 1978 immortal classic…

Halloween.

Whenever any film takes place during this particular holiday…

It automatically adds an eerie element…

A spooky vibe that radiates throughout the film…

And subsequently…

Immerses me in that delicious, devilish, delight…

Known as…

The Halloween Spirit.

So, let’s take a chronological look at the scariest, spookiest, and possibly even unknown to you, It’s Halloween! Movies…That will put you in that Halloween mood…In the years following John Carpenter’s Halloween. 

The Dark Night of the Scarecrow (1981) – This creepy TV movie aired on CBS a week before Halloween in 1981…And it has stayed with me for years…When it was finally released a few years ago, I was able to re-watch it…And…It holds up surprisingly well…Larry Drake (Dr. Giggles) was amazing as Bubba…A kind and gentle, mentally challenged man…Who befriends a young girl…The small-minded townsfolk don’t take too kindly to this friendship, especially the even smaller-minded mailman, played by Charles Durning…When the young girl is attacked by a dog, the mailman and a group of fellow pea-brains…Go looking for Bubba…Laying false blame on him for the young girl’s injuries…Bubba disguises himself as a scarecrow in a field, and when discovered…The innocent man is murdered by the mindless mob…What happens next is a classic case of well orchestrated supernatural revenge…But underneath it all…Is an undying and unlikely friendship between two  beautifully innocent people.

Halloween III: Season of the Witch (1982) – Okay this wrongly maligned film is right behind the 1978 original…In terms of Halloween spirit…Seriously…I start hearing the Silver Shamrock song in my head by the first week of October…As I’ve mentioned before…The fans that decided that Michael Myers should be the next Jason Voorhees and lead the franchise through its many mediocre sequels…Were wrong…Had they not created such a stink…John Carpenter could have continued the franchise in the way he wanted to do it…Each Halloween, he planned on releasing another original Halloween themed film…Imagine if that had happened…How many amazing films that I could have added to this list! So to those out there who still hate this one…I say to you…Thanks a ton, asshats…As much as you think I’m a douche for loving this film…Your short-sighted love of Michael Myers robbed horror fans of the potential for an ass-load of amazing Halloween films…Therefore making you the bigger douche…Or as they commonly say in France, “Na na na na goo goo…Stick your head in doo doo.”

Silver Bullet (1985) – I’ve always had a soft spot for this Stephen King adaptation…Not because it’s one of the best…Guess it just must be the Gary Busey factor…Who knows? But whatever it is…This film makes up for any of its shortcomings with heart, and an incredibly organic performance from the aforementioned Busey…When consulted about scenes of dialogue that Busey did both ways…Ad-libbed and from the script…Stephen King always chose the ad-libbed scenes…It was a brilliant choice that made Busey’s portrayal of Uncle Red both endearing and memorable to the audience…And as the story of young paraplegic, Marty Coslaw vs. the town werewolf moves towards its thrilling climax…The months on the calendar get ripped off one by one…Eventually stopping its forward momentum in the month of October and of course…Halloween. 

Night of the Demons (1988) – Within the first few moments of the animated title sequence…If you aren’t completely giddy with the Halloween Spirit…Then there’s something wrong with you…In this fun romp through a typical All Hallows Eve in the 80’s…Social misfit, Angela and her friend Suzanne, played by the always titilatingly trashy Linnea Quigley decide to throw a party at the local mortuary…Before long it’s a bunch of dudes with mini-mullets that would’ve made Eugene Porter proud…And ladies with enough Aqua-Net in their hair to single-handedly cause global warming… Some folks consider this film cheesy…And that’s okay…Not only is cheese really good sometimes…But this time, I say it’s just the right amount of cheese…The naughty and bawdy wild ride is still a ton of fun to go on…It’s a straight-up 80’s party movie…One that screams, “It’s Halloween!”

The Crow (1994) – I had to take a break after the shocking tragedy that took place on the set of this film…It was truly difficult that night at the theater…I kept getting distracted by the symbolism of death being the main theme in a film where the lead actor was killed eight days before filming ended…That actor, Brandon Lee…Turned in a stellar performance as Eric Draven…And that performance…Along with the visually stunning style of director Alex Proyas (Dark City)…Not to mention, the tragedy…Made this film an instant cult classic…This was the most visceral and violent comic book adaptation I had ever seen…The dark and gritty version of Detroit that appeared on-screen, made Gotham City look like a nice neighborhood to live in…After years had passed…I was able to go back and revisit and rekindle my love for this film…A film that takes place on the night before Halloween.

Idle Hands (1999) – In the 90’s…Stoners changed their name…To slackers…The nomenclature didn’t continue into the next decade…Making it exclusively…A 90’s thing…And this film is the quintessential slacker horror movie…It tells the gory and hilarious story of Anton, played by Devon Sawa (Final Destination)…A slacker who realizes after he murders his parents, and his two best friends…That his right hand is possessed…Not interested in the afterlife, Anton’s pals choose the undead route…Pnub, played by Elden Henson (The Mighty Ducks) and Mick, played by Seth Green (Buffy the Vampire Slayer) were hilarious in the roles of the zombie stoners…Um, I mean…The zombie slackers…The film has been panned by critics…But it is one of my favorite 90’s horror movies…And always puts me in the mood for my favorite holiday…Halloween.

Murder Party (2007) – A few months back…I threw up a spotlight and shined it on this film…Calling it a 21st Century Cult Classic…This is the feature film debut of director Jeremy Saulnier…His next two films…Blue Ruin and Green Room…Established him as someone who can create taut, intense thrillers that place the unlikely protagonist in a situation that starts out to be insurmountably horrible…And only get worse as the film progresses…This gory, tongue-in-cheek debut shows where Saulnier cut his teeth on that premise…When we meet this film’s protagonist, he appears to be, a lonely doofus with not much else in his life besides his cat and his love for horror videos…But he longs for more…So the invitation to a “Murder Party” that he picked up off the street seems like a good way to socialize and maybe even make some friends…The narcissistic art school sociopaths who are hosting this Halloween party have other plans for the loveable loser…But as with his other films…Saulnier teaches us that things don’t always work out the way you plan them.

Trick ‘r Treat (2007) – In this Halloween themed horror anthology…We not only get the rare opportunity of individual stories that are all equally disturbing and entertaining…But we also get these stories intertwined in a way that the normal wraparound intro and conclusion model never accomplished…These stories live in the same world with each other…And Sam, the resident host who strings them all together, travels freely from story to story…Bringing immense danger wrapped in a tiny package…Like a fun-sized thermonuclear device…Writer/director Michael Dougherty (Krampus) carefully balanced the horror and the humor in this film…And because of his deft hand, crafted a despicably delicious Halloween party movie.

The Guest (2014) – Adam Wingard is a director that I dig…A lot…First thing I saw was You’re Next…And I was hooked…Since then, I have taken a look back at some of his earlier fils like A Horrible Way to Die…And, Homesick…And of course, I loved his segments in The ABC’s of Death, V/H/S and V/H/S/2…Not to mention his foray into television when he directed the pilot episode of Robert Kirkman‘s new series, Outcast…Enough about his impressive résumé…In this film that feels like it was pulled out of a time capsule from 1986…Dan Stevens (Legion) plays David…A man claiming to be the friend of fellow fallen soldier, Caleb…When he arrives at the home of Caleb’s parents…They are having a difficult time coping with the loss of their son, and wrongly welcome this stranger into their lives…He quickly begins to inject himself into perceived problems each member of the family is having…The results of these interferences will startle the audience…As the film bulldozes its way towards a very Halloween themed climax.

Tales of Halloween (2015) – Much like with Night of the Demons…This film screams Halloween from the first moments of the opening title sequence…To hear the narration of a very familiar disc jockey from our past…Adrienne Barbeau channeled Stevie Wayne, her character from John Carpenter’s The Fog…And served as the interconnecting host, stringing the tales together…With most horror anthologies, there are hits and misses…We quietly ride out the misses…Just to get a chance to scream and cheer for the hits…The good news with this one…There are way more hits than misses throughout the ten segments…No surprise considering the top-notch talent behind the cameras on this one…Darren Lynn Bousman (Saw II, III, and IV)…Lucky McKee (May, All Cheerleaders Die)…And, Neil Marshall (The Descent, Doomsday)…Just to name a few…Are some of the directors responsible for these twisted short films that are guaranteed to fill you up with the Halloween Spirit.

Frightday Night Film Recommendations: Nosey, Nasty, or Nefarious Neighbors

It’s Friday…

Ahem…I mean Frightday…

And I have some recommendations for you to enjoy this weekend…

Okay…This Frightday’s theme is…

Nosey, Nasty, or Nefarious Neighbors.

 

When I was a kid…

I went to a friend’s house…

 

And on that night…

His parents made some popcorn…

 

And then, we all sat around the living room…

 

And watched a film called, Rear Window…

 

It was my first experience with a Hitchcock movie…

 

It was also my first experience with a discomforting, wincing, nail-biting, edge-of-your-seat thriller…

 

And it was my first experience with understanding the importance of minding one’s own business…

 

 

A valueable lesson…

 

 

Especially where your freaky-ass neighbors are concerned.

 

 

So, let’s take a chronological look at the nosiest, nastiest, most nightmarish, and maybe even unknown to you, Nosey, Nasty, or Nightmarish Neighbors Movies…In the years following Rear Window. 

 

 

The Tenant (1976) – Much like he did with 1968’s Rosemary’s Baby (which was excluded because we’ve all seen it a million times)…Roman Polanski created another apartment-based paranoia film…Unlike with The Creepy Castevets from that film…Who actually were up to no good…In this film we see the other side of paranoia…We begin to wonder as we travel down the darkened corridor’s of the protagonist’s mind…If it isn’t all just a construct created there…Polanski does an amazing job on both sides of the camera…As his character, Trelkovsky spirals out of any sense of control right before our eyes…Now we the audience are never given any sense of clarity in the matter of Trelkovsky’s sanity…But that is one of the reasons that I enjoy this film so much…Sometimes it’s cool when the audience gets to decide what really went down…Sometimes it’s cool when some of the questions raised along the way…Remain unanswered.

The Sentinel (1977) – This film has drawn comparison to Rosemary’s Baby, simply due to the satanic themes that both films share…But this is a horse of an entirely different color…This film has an incredible cast of familiar faces…Like, Chris Sarandon, Christopher Walken, Jeff Goldblum, Beverly D’Angelo, Eli Wallach, and many many more…And tells the story of a beautiful, yet neurotic model who moves into a very strange building full of dark and disturbing mysteries…That story…Builds and builds until the chaotic and frightening final act…Which for those of you who haven’t seen it…Will be a surprising and original ending to one of my favorite horror movies of the 70’s…I was so pleased, but also a little surprised when back in 2004 this film made it all the way up to #46 on the 100 Scariest Movie Moments mini-series that Bravo aired around Halloween.

 

Body Double (1984) – Say what you will about Brian De Palma…There’s one thing he’s always been good at…Stealing…Um, I mean…Paying homage to other directors…But seriously…I love De Palma…In this one, he pays homage to Hitchcock…Most specifically Rear Window and Vertigo…This is a classic over-the-top sexually charged 80’s thriller…Craig Wasson (Ghost Story, Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors) stars as Jake Scully, a troubled B-Movie actor who suffers from claustrophobia…He gets involved in a Hitchcockian web of all things fucked-up…And as the troubled actor slowly uncovers the truth of what is happening…He discovers exactly what role he’s playing…You like what I did there? Actor…Role…Pretty clever, huh?

 

The Bedroom Window (1987) – Another homage to the great Hitchcock classic, Rear Window…This one comes from Curtis Hanson…The director who received critical acclaim for his 1997 Hollywood noir film, L.A. Confidential…In this film, the twist on the classic premise is that Terry, played surprisingly well by Steve Guttenberg, has to pretend to be a witness in an attack on his next door neighbor…The reason? Well…His boss’ wife is the actual eye witness to the crime…And since she was boning Terry in his apartment, when the attack occurred…They both felt it would be prudent to leave her cheating ass out of it…As Guttenberg’s character loses credibility faster than the actor himself did after Police Academy 4…He becomes the main suspect in the case and is forced to scramble to find the real perpetrator.

 

Pacific Heights (1990) – This creepy thriller from director John Schlesinger (Midnight Cowboy, Marathon Man, Falcon and the Snowman, and The Believers) shows us regular non-landlording folks out there…Why the hell we should never be a landlord…The landlords are played by Melanie Griffith (Body Double) and Matthew Modine (Stranger Things)…Their tenant is played by Michael Keaton…When I saw him for the first time, it was in 1979…On a sitcom with Jim Belushi called, Working Stiffs…He was hysterically funny…And he continued to be one of the funniest comedic actors around, for years…Then I saw him be serious in Clean and Sober…Then in the following year, I saw him be Batman…And I was like…Hey, he’s not just funny…But in this one…Oh boy…Folks…In this one…Keaton was something else entirely.

Apt Pupil (1998) – Following the runaway success of The Usual Suspects, his debut film…Bryan Singer decided to bring a Stephen King story to life…One of the darkest, and least supernatural in King’s library…It was originally published in a collection of four novellas called Different Seasons alongside two other extremely successful adaptations…The Body which became Stand By Me…And Rita Hayworth And Shawshank Redemption which became the less wordy The Shawshank Redemption…The late Brad Renfro portrayed Todd Bowden, the disturbed and ultra-violent high-school senior who discovers that his neighbor is actually a Nazi war criminal, played by Sir Ian McKellen…This is a devious display of the cruelty that sometimes lurks beneath the surface of young men…The more Todd manipulates the elderly man…The more we the audience feel uncomfortable having sympathy towards him.

 

Arlington Road (1999) – Just two short years before the events of 9/11…This film gave us a life lesson in homegrown terrorism…And apparently that lesson is a step by step instruction of what not to do if you discover terrorists living next door…Jeff Bridges plays a college professor who begins to doubt the true nature of his new neighbors, The Langs, played by Tim Robbins and Joan Cusack…With each unearthed clue…His paranoia increases, leading him to further mistrust them…Cusack and Robbins (much like Keaton in Pacific Heights), known for their comedic roles took a sharp left turn into the dark side in this one…Becoming almost unrecognizable…This thriller not only shows us in a frightening fashion, what it might be like if we ever had a neighbor like the Langs…But it also shows us what can happen to us if we succumb to our own fear and paranoia.

 

Next Door (2005) – Released in Norway as Naboer…When you try this film for the first time…You’ll detect not only the obvious notes of Hitchcock…But also the overpowering deviant aroma of Polanski…And you’ll finish with a slight mind-altering aftertaste of Christopher Nolan…This film tells us the story of John…He’s a man who has been recently dumped and depressed until in Knock Knock fashion, he’s forcefully taken into a dark world with two seductive women in an apartment down the hall…The events that take place after these two women enter his life…Are a twisting, and turning, mind-bending, and gut-wrenching ride on a rickety rollercoaster…And I didn’t see where it was going…And when it got there…I was blown away.

 

Disturbia (2007) – Another straight-up homage to Rear Window…Hell they even had to defend themselves in court when they were accused of stealing the idea from Rear Window’s original source material…But screw originality…This is totally and 100% a millennial Rear Window…And I loved it…Before getting all fucked up in the head, and filming himself watching his own films, Shia LaBeouf played Kale, a troubled teen on house arrest…In his boredom, he begins spying on his neighbors to help pass the time…With the help of his friend Ronnie, played by Aaron Yoo…And his new obsession-turned-squeeze Ashley, played by Sarah Roemer…The film begins to take on a young versus old vibe, as the only people besides the audience that are aware of what is really going on are the three teenagers.

 

The Resident (2011) – In this one…Hilary Swank plays Dr. Juliet Devereaux…A woman who recently dumped her man, and found herself a place of her own in a building owned by a charming man named Max…Played by none other than Negan himself…Jeffrey Dean Morgan…I swear…This is the film that got him that job on The Walking Dead…The character of Max is an walking dichotomy made up of equal parts charm and danger…And although there is no surprise twist ending that you’re waiting for…No mysterious resolution…No whodunnit…This film holds the tension for the entire 91 minutes…And it makes your friggin’ skin crawl all the way through it.

 

Fright Night (2011) – What? The reboot of Fright Night is on this list…And not the original? What the hell?…I know, I know…But my reasoning comes from the fact that more of us have seen the original 1985 classic than have seen this surprisingly good remake…So therefore…This one made the list…Anton Yelchin (Man do I miss him) played Charley Brewster, the titular nosey neighbor…And the vampire in question was this time brought to life by Colin Farrell…McLovin, or Christopher Mintz-Plasse played Evil Ed…And The Doctor himself, David Tennant portrays a very different version of Peter Vincent…With a cast like this…A smart script from Buffy alum, Marti Noxon…How could you not give this truly well-made reboot a try?

 

The Neighbor (2016) – Ahhh…Marcus Dunstan and Patrick Melton are at it again…I love these guys…First thing I dug that they co-wrote was Feast…These two also wrote the last four films in the Saw series…They created a franchise all their own with The Collector and The Collection…In those films they co-wrote the script, and Dunstan directed…They gave Josh Stewart his first starring role in a feature film…And brought him back for more in this one…He plays John, a crook (again) who is looking to pull off one last job and move himself and his girl, played by Alex Essoe (Starry Eyes), far away from the dark and dangerous life…There seems to be only one thing standing in his way…His neighbor, played with surprising omenous intensity, and without a shred of comedy by, Bill Engvall, is up to all sorts of no good…And John’s girlfriend has been spying on him…And she got caught…Now John has to try and save her from a truly wild and crazy redneck shit-show. 

Frightday Night Film Recommendations: SPOILER ALERT! – How The Hell Did They Survive???

It’s Friday…

Ahem…I mean Frightday…

And I have some recommendations for you to enjoy this weekend…

Okay…This Frightday’s theme is…

SPOILER ALERT! – How The Hell Did They Survive???

The girl in the photo is Sally Hardesty…

In 1974…

Out of all of her friends…

Somehow…

Some way…

Sally survived a run-in with some seriously ravenous rednecks…

 

How did she avoid becoming another tasty Texas teen on their table?

 

Beats me…

 

The only weapon in her arsenal was screaming incessantly…

 

But, when the Sawyer family’s dusty and desiccated Grandpa was elected the lucky one to swing the hammer and take Sally out…

 

He fucked it up…

 

And she got away…

 

 

 

Sorry in advance about the spoilers…

 

But, it’s kinda hard to do a list of the most surprising survivors to ever make it out of a horror movie alive…

 

Without telling you guys who they are.

 

So, let’s take a chronological look at the least likely, hardest to believe, and possibly even unknown to you, How The Hell Did They Survive??? Movies…In the years following Sally’s escape in The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. 

 

The Shining (1980) –  So…Your husband is an alcoholic prone to bouts of aggression and violence…Wendy was thinking…Hmm…Maybe some couples counseling…Or perhaps a sit down with the priest at the local parish for some sage-like advice…But no…Wendy went with a little known third option…Go live in a secluded hotel in the middle of snowbound Colorado…Wait for your husband to get good and influenced by the dark forces around him…And hand him an axe…No offense to actress Shelley Duvall…Because, for all I know she and Wendy couldn’t be more different…But her portrayal of a mouse imitating a human trying to navigate her way out of a wet paper bag was amazing…And thanks to the cunning bravery of her young son…Danny turned his totally mental Dad into a Freezer Pop.

Here’s Wendy now…

Doing what Wendy does best.

 

Friday the 13^th Part 2 (1981) – Not until Cabin In The Woods did we see either a stoner or a nerd get even a little bit close to surviving a horror movie…Shelly in Friday the 13th: Part 3 was perhaps the quintessential dorky comic relief in a slasher film…And you know what happened to him, don’t ya? Yep…That’s right…Dead…And upon Shelly’s death…He unknowingly bequeathed to Jason, his hockey mask…Thus providing the killer with his signature look for years to come…But the film that preceded that one…Not only broke the cardinal rule about the dorky comic relief biting it…But did it in the most surprising way…You see…Ted didn’t survive the carnage of that summer…He escaped it entirely…And no one was more surprised than me that Ted, that magnificent bastard, pulled it off…He just left Paul and Ginny at the bar…In search of an after hours joint…Now Paul was another one who was never seen getting slaughtered either…But he didn’t go with Ted…He went back to camp…And we all knows what happens there.

And…Here’s Ted hanging out with Paul…Right before…

 Ted chose getting shit-faced over getting disemboweled.

 

Cujo (1983) –  Now when Donna and Tad Trenton arrive at Joe Cambers place to get their Ford Pinto repaired…Here’s what we know so far…The mechanic has a pet St. Bernard who has become rabid…Has already killed their alcoholic neighbor Gary, and his own abusive owner, Joe…Oh…And we also know that Tad’s mom is a cheatin’ ho…Oh yeah…And by the way…Tad is a chicken-shit little turducken who wets his jammies every time Mike and Sully pop out of his closet at night for a visit…So they are definitely lined up to become Cujo’s next bowl of human kibbles and bits, right? Well that’s what I thought too…But somehow…Some way…Donna manages to do what even the town sheriff can’t pull off…She goes full Tiger Mama and kicks that nasty dog’s ass.

She would’ve put Tad down before shooting Cujo…

But he is stuck there…Due to the slimy dog slobber all over her shirt.

 

Friday the 13^th: The Final Chapter (1984) – Okay…So not only did two people survive this edition of the series…Tommy and Trish Jarvis…But the other huge monkey wrench is that Trish is not the Final Girl…In fact, she isn’t really made of Final Girl stuff…Hell, there isn’t even a Final Girl in this one at all…Nope…In this my favorite Friday film…Corey Feldman played one of my great horror movie heroes…As a fourteen year old kid from rural New Hampshire obsessed with horror movies and special effects…I had never seen anyone on the big screen that represented my people…Horror Geeks…But here was a kid that not only managed to get inside Jason’s head with his mindfuck trickery…But he also managed to get inside Jason’s head with a big ol’ machete.

Went sort of full creepy there at the end, Corey…

 Still not half as creepy as that TODAY Show performance.

 

Nightbreed (1990) – In this multicultural monster movie from the macabre mind of Clive Barker…Lori, a sweater clad fan of Mom Jeans, has discovered that her boyfriend Boone isn’t a psychotic serial killer, after all…And he also isn’t dead…But…He is a monster…So she travels to a place called Midian…It’s a town beneath a cemetery where the monsters all live…And hot on her tail, is an actual psychotic serial killer…If that wasn’t scary enough…He’s played by David Cronenberg…I’m not sure how mousey little Lori pulled this one off, folks…I know her monstrous boyfriend protects her…But that sumbitch can’t be everywhere at once…And yet Lori avoids all manner of possible demise…The monsters of Midian don’t get her…Ol’ Buttonface doesn’t get her…Flaming carnage and destruction don’t get her…Huh…Maybe it’s the Mom Jeans after all.

Don’t worry about all that blood, Lori…

All you have to do to survive…Is harness the power of those jeans.

 

Cronos (1993) – In his delightfully macabre and touching take on vampires…Guillermo del Toro shows us the effects of his version of the vampire virus on an elderly antiques dealer…He also shows us the effects of the infection on the elderly man’s relationships…In particular…His young granddaughter, Aurora…Who is by her grandfather’s side through the entire process…The fact that she is in the presence of a man becoming a monster is dangerous enough…But she also gets caught up in a conflict with a deranged wealthy businessman…And his homicidal nephew, played by Ron Perlman…If not for the unconditional love of her metamorphic grandfather…There is no way that young Aurora could have survived this surreal nightmare.

 Poor little Aurora had to watch her grandfather transform before her eyes…

Like when my Grandpa started wearing a toupee and a gold chain…Simply frightening.

 

Cube (1997) – In Vincenzo Natali’s directorial debut…He brings a group of unique individuals together…And tries to kill them all…Inside the cube, there are thousands of rooms…Many of which contain deadly booty traps…It’s booby traps…That’s what I said…Booty traps…This diverse group of prisoners must work together to traverse this cube in an attempt to escape…One of them…Kazan…Is a severely autistic man who happens to have been granted the amazing gift of doing prime factorizations in his head…Not only can danger be found within a room loaded with acid spray, or a giant cheese grater…But danger can also be found within the group itself…And Kazan manages to escape each and every one.

Go to the light Carol Ann…

Um…I mean Kazan.

 

The Hills Have Eyes (2006) – When one of my favorite French directors, Alexandre Aja…Came to the states and started remaking old horror films like this one and the campy gorefest, Piranha…I was super-psyched…Here’s why…When low-budget films of the late 70’s get the modern, high definition, big budget treatment…It can go one of two ways…When in the wrong hands like 2006’s The Wicker Man…Or like when Rob Zombie attempted to repaint the Sistine Chapel in 2007’s Halloween remake…It almost sullies the memory of the original…But when these memorable movies are in the right hands like with this film…Or like when Breck Eisner remade The Crazies…Oh boy…It’s as if they took everything that you loved from the original…And improved on it…And just like in the original…Doug is the ineffectual son-in-law that no one expects to man up…But in this one…He’s a little nerdier…A little weaker…And a little less likely to survive these mutant freaks.

Hey, here’s Doug now…

Striking a natural, yet completely chicken-shit pose

 

Hush (2016) – In this film directed by Mike Flanagan (Oculus)…And co-written by his wife, Kate Siegel (who just so happens to play Maddie, the unlikely survivor in this film)…They put a totally fresh spin on the home invasion horror movie in this one…The victim of the homicidal home invasion is a deaf woman named Maddie…I mean talk about a disadvantage…You cannot hear your attacker approaching…And you cannot hear yourself making a shit-ton of noise while trying to hide…It ended up taking the film to a much higher tension level than I was prepared for…But through it all…As the psychotic intruder played to chilling perfection by John Gallagher Jr. (10 Cloverfield Lane)…Is killing the handful of people that surround this woman’s rural home…Maddie does almost as impressive a job in striking back at her assaillant…As she does at fucking up along the way.

Now do you understand…

Why I didn’t think Maddie would survive?

 

The Shallows (2016) – Jaume Collet-Serra, the director of Orphan showed me that he could finally find something out there…Almost as scary as a psychotic Russian orphan…A killer shark…Now right off the bat…I need to tell you that I was ushered into the idea of the killer shark in the most correct way possible…Through the viewing of Jaws…So you can imagine without the surly, and cantankerous Quint…The brave, and relentless Chief Brody…Or the knowledgable, and courageous Hooper…I have a hard time imagining young medical student, Nancy standing a chance at all…I mean, come on…Quint was hands-down, the biggest bad-ass in Jaws…The man with more face to face shark battles under his belt than anyone else alive…And still…Jaws ate his ass up, like he was cranky and needed a Snickers bar.

Oh yeah…This should be no problem, Nancy…

You got this.

 

Here’s some Honorable Mentions…

 

Terry, Glen, and Al…

From 1987’s The Gate

Kirsty and Tiffany…

From 1988’s Hellbound: Hellraiser II 

 

Fool…

From 1992’s The People Under The Stairs

And…

Officer Dewey…

From 1996’s Scream