Welcome To Our Nightmare III: Terror, Wooley... and TAKOMA!

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The biggest issue with longer horror, and even a lot of regular length horror, is that they fill the extra time with unnecessary explanations and discovery, or they overexpose the monster. Comedies and action movies do better with longer runtimes because more jokes and more explosions is always better, but more monster screen time makes it cheaper.



I managed to watch 32 horror movies this month, which I haven't even come close to in years. These are them:

Movies I hadn't seen but loved:
Evil Dead 2
Blood Feast
The Living Dead at Manchester Morgue
Evil Dead
The Unbinding
Zombie 1979
Ghostwatch
Movies I hadn't seen and did not much care for:

Slumber Party Massacre
Inferno
Evilspeak
Die, Monster, Die!
Talk to Me
The Exorcism of Emily Rose
Swamp Thing (I know now this isn't horror, but I didn't know before.)
Bloodsucking Pharaohs in Pittsburg
The First Omen
Demonic
The Omen 2
The Omen 3
Men Little Monsters
Movies I had already seen and loved:
The Shining
The Apparition
House by the Cemetary
Dawn of the Dead
From Within
The Beyond
Messiah of Evil
The Bye Bye Man
The Hideous Sun Demon
City of the Living Dead
Noroi

Pretty bad batting average on the new ones honestly.



Victim of The Night
And now the inevitable (for me anyway)...


It has become a bit of a tradition, I think, for me to watch this movie on Halloween night, mostly just because it's exactly what I want out of Halloween and it's a lot of fun. It also has great nostalgia value for me (though I did go through a period as an adult where I didn't like it anymore) as I saw this in the theater with a friend (who I actually just talked to) 39 years ago.
And it has, really, my favorite Cinema Vampire, ladies and gentlemen, Mr. Jerry Dandridge...


For whatever reason, this year's viewing had me really focusing on Sarandon and his performance here and I really do just put it right up there pretty close to Lugosi and Lee but I just enjoy him the most.
Add all the other things I love, fog, practical effects, a great "werewolf"...


... with a great de-transformation as you don't see him become a wolf but you see him turn back, very slowly, into a human. Just so many things to like about this. My girlfriend especially liked Charlie's mom, she got a kick out of her offering her 17 year-old son a Valium.
Well, I don't wanna flog a dead horse here, everybody who's ever read my threads has heard me go into plenty of detail on all the things I love about this movie so I won't re-hash it all I'll just say I had a great time with it yet again, it's a perfect Halloween movie, and it was a great way to end my favorite season.



Fright Night is great.

I think I've talked about this a few times before, but I have a weird nostalgia for the film because when I would fly home from college, this movie was somehow always on the TV in the motel where I'd stay the night before my flight (always a 6am flight). So I associate the movie with going home and Thanksgiving/Christmas.



As I explained to Wooley back in September, my current schedule does not allow for a lot of forum time, so I was forced to take a more limited role this year. As a result I wasn't able to share my thoughts about a lot of stuff I watched, and missed the opportunity to join in some convos that I wanted to, like the current state of trick-or-treating or Wooley's incorrect opinions about The Changeling. (just kidding )

Here are the films I managed to see in October:

The Devil's Lover
They Have Changed Their Face
Baba Yaga
The Spell
Cross of the Devil
Cake of Blood
Necrophagous
Viy

Soavi:
Stagefright
The Church
The Sect
Cemetery Man

Bava the Elder:
Black Sunday
Hercules in the Haunted World
The Girl Who Knew Too Much
Black Sabbath
The Whip and the Body
Blood and Black Lace
Planet of the Vampires
Kill, Baby...Kill!
Five Dolls for an August Moon
Hatchet for the Honeymoon
Bay of Blood
Baron Blood
Lisa and the Devil
Rabid Dogs
Shock

Fulci:
City of the Living Dead
The Beyond
The House by the Cemetery

Laurel & Hardy:
Habeas Corpus
The Laurel-Hardy Murder Case

in theaters:
Cat People
Island of Lost Souls

Children's films:
Jack O'Lantern
The Mad Mad Mad Monsters
Mad Monster Party?
Halloween is Grinch Night
The New Misadventures of Ichabod Crane
It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown
__________________
Captain's Log
My Collection



Victim of The Night
As I explained to Wooley back in September, my current schedule does not allow for a lot of forum time, so I was forced to take a more limited role this year. As a result I wasn't able to share my thoughts about a lot of stuff I watched, and missed the opportunity to join in some convos that I wanted to, like the current state of trick-or-treating or Wooley's incorrect opinions about The Changeling. (just kidding )

Here are the films I managed to see in October:

The Devil's Lover
They Have Changed Their Face
Baba Yaga
The Spell
Cross of the Devil
Cake of Blood
Necrophagous
Viy

Soavi:
Stagefright
The Church
The Sect
Cemetery Man

Bava the Elder:
Black Sunday
Hercules in the Haunted World
The Girl Who Knew Too Much
Black Sabbath
The Whip and the Body
Blood and Black Lace
Planet of the Vampires
Kill, Baby...Kill!
Five Dolls for an August Moon
Hatchet for the Honeymoon
Bay of Blood
Baron Blood
Lisa and the Devil
Rabid Dogs
Shock

Fulci:
City of the Living Dead
The Beyond
The House by the Cemetery

Laurel & Hardy:
Habeas Corpus
The Laurel-Hardy Murder Case

in theaters:
Cat People
Island of Lost Souls

Children's films:
Jack O'Lantern
The Mad Mad Mad Monsters
Mad Monster Party?
Halloween is Grinch Night
The New Misadventures of Ichabod Crane
It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown
As always, a tremendous pleasure doing this with you. I was glad you were able to find time to do it. Frankly, you gave a lot more than you led me to expect and I appreciate it.
At your leisure, I would love to hear your thoughts about these, perhaps back over in the 'Cram (as I don't know how much longer we wanna let this thing go on):

Viy
The Sect
Cemetery Man
Blood and Black Lace
Bay of Blood
The Beyond



It's very difficult for a horror movie premise to remain scary and interesting for much longer than 90 minutes. There are exceptions, but successful longer horror movies usually have extremely talented directors, and often take long breaks in action to build up tension again.
Yup; that's exactly why Alien is (in my opinion) is the best Horror movie of all time, because it has ebbs and flows to its pacing, and isn't just non-stop terror, which quickly becomes tiresome, even in short movies.



At your leisure, I would love to hear your thoughts about these, perhaps back over in the 'Cram (as I don't know how much longer we wanna let this thing go on):

Viy
The Sect
Cemetery Man
Blood and Black Lace
Bay of Blood
The Beyond
Attempted to reply to this today and had to abandon it in order to do my "job" or whatever. I'll give it another try tomorrow



LOL, lest this become my legacy (begging for HalloWEEN***), my complaint is about the disparity, not the presence or lack of nudity from anyone.

***Next year's "Welcome to Our Nightmare" theme? No? Anyone?
The good news: tonight's feature, White Dress For Mariale, opens with a love scene involving a completely clothed woman and a completely nude man. A cinema first?


The bad news: this is immediately followed by a scene of unsimulated monkey-on-bird violence.


Scavolini giveth...etc



Victim of The Night
My apologies for resurrecting my own thread but I was supposed to post this after the Halloween III: Season Of The Witch review from Halloween Night and I forgot.


Stand Alone
The Making Of Halloween III: Season Of The Witch


I really enjoyed this, gave me not only a real sense of what this movie was and was going for and its failure and all that but also a wonderful sense of the John Carpenter/Debra Hill Family.