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

It was Schrodinger's Cat, but, yeah.

Yes, I reviewed that movie somewhere around here and talked about the tropes of the mother (a woman) making the killer who kills women.
That said, there was something deranged about that movie in a good way too.

Mmm, is it?

I didn't mean just action movies now. I meant over all decades. Trust me, action movies before 2000 were VERY misogynistic.

Agreed. I also think it matters whether the violence itself is specific to women. If he kills men too, but kills them in a way literally anyone could be killed, that's obviously different than killing women and then playing around with parts of their bodies specific to them. It's the same difference between calling someone a "bitch" instead of a "jerk."

Late Night talk show host Jack Delroy has lived in Johnny Carson's shadow for five years and now his own light is fading as he faces possible cancellation of his show. For a "sweep's week" ratings stunt, he hosts an occult-themed show on Halloween night with the piece de resistance a teenage girl who is purportedly possessed by a demon.
Things go wrong almost the entire time as his psychic guest has a real episode and projectile vomits on another guest, the "skeptic" he invited on the show, who also proceeds to drag everything down with his pompous refutations, but then finally he is saved when the girl is clearly possessed and the demon pays his show a visit through her.


I've really been wrestling with this one.
I really don't have a lot negative to say about it. I didn't love the Skeptic character, I thought he was overdone and kinda dragged not only Delroy's show down, as intended, but the movie as well (probably not intended). And the manager and the sidekick, and maybe some others were unintentional caricatures as well.
And maybe I thought it was all too obvious with the narrated documentary bit at the beginning basically telling you what was probably really going on so you kinda knew where the movie was going all along. But I've forgiven much worse in movies I ended up really liking (like, say, the blood transfusions in Near Dark.)
And yet it seems telling that the most memorable thing about the movie, to me, was that they used a replica of the Night Owl mask from Soavi's Stage Fright (a movie that really does leave an impression on me) for the cult leader, a nod that is amusing given that the titular "Late Night" show is called "Night Owls". I really appreciated that. A lot.
But the fact that that's the first thing I think of when I think of this movie tells me that maybe the movie just didn't race my motor.
To be fair, demonic possession, taken seriously, rarely, if ever does anything for me. When I saw The Exorcist in the theater in 2000, I practically yawned through the whole thing. But something like Lamberto Bava's Demons is a lot of fun.
I think this landed in some weird liminal space between the two. I'm not sure I was nearly as entertained as the movie seemed to think I should be.


Edit - After thinking about Yoda's point, below, I wanted to be a little more clear.
I thought this movie was "fine" or better. I think I ended up grading it on a harsher curve because of all the buzz around it. Maybe if I'd seen it de novo, before all the hype, I might have liked it more. A revisitation some day may straighten things out one way or another.

Definitely an underrated part of which horror lands and which doesn't. I saw Signs in the theaters with a friend, and while I found it very tense, I didn't find it scary...but he was absolutely terrified. Something about aliens just got under his skin, whereas for me I think of them in sci-fi terms. And I think of all the films and shows where they're not scary. I find them interesting rather than frightening. And we had totally different experiences with the movie as a result. I thought of it as a thriller, and he thought of it as a horror film.

I am 100% with you on this. Witches and witchcraft and sometimes ghosts will actually give me the willies but aliens, home-invasion, even slashers where the killer is just some dude, they are not even really Horror to me. Demonic possession is definitely Horror but for some reason just never seems all that convincing to me and not scary at all. Like I actually like The Conjuring up until
The reason it works for me in some movies is when the possessed actually becomes some kind of monster, like Demons that I already mentioned or Night Of The Demons. That's a little more effective for me.
And hey, as I'm editing into my review, I would give this movie a faintly positive review actually. Or even "pretty good". I realized as I was thinking about your post that my review sounds pretty negative even though I actually thought it was a completely passable film, just no great shake. And maybe expectations were a part of my reaction too.

This is why I always bristle whenever Alien is ranked #1 on anyone's horror list. To be clear, I LOVE Alien and I recognize all the reasons someone might call it a horror film. But in the back of my mind is always the nagging, "Yeah, but it's an alien though...."

Doesn't make sense I guess but it is what it is.

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Captain's Log
My Collection

It seems there is a need for some October corrections

1) The first third of Amer is 100% horror. It also stands on its own, if anyone is concerned the rest of it isn't horror enough. And it's some of the best horror of this millennium.

2) Playing with misogynistic tropes does not make a filmmaker a misogynist. Not that people should find reasons to watch the Terrifier movies (the first one is abysmal, the second one is interesting for those so inclined), but let's not get into pointless moralizing about why a movie is probably shit.

3) It's okay to not like Late Night With the Devil. It's worse than The Conjuring by a ****ing mile.

4) Aliens qualify as horror. It's all about the context of how the aliens are used.

5) Everyone appears to be on the money about Ghost Story. It's flashbacks (particularly the second one) are way too long and not very well done. But there is enough there to recommend to those who are patient and like their ghosts stories fairly traditional and unadorned. Also, for those complaining about the pointless inclusion of the mental patient escapee and the kid (which is fair because it's hard to say why they are even in the movie) look up the synopsis of the book to realize how integral they actually are to the original story...and also to realize how insanely different the novel is to what ends up on screen. Shapeshifters? Huh?

Okay, back to my secret underwater lair where apparently all I'm going to watch are really lousy hour long sci-fi B-movies, most of which I hate.

*glub glub glub*

:crumbsroom sighting klaxon:

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Ok, so I'm watching All Hallows Eve – already finished the first two stories – but I have a question out of curiosity. Like I said before, I had already seen The 9th Circle short and I noticed that Leone added some extra footage to that (I think it improved the short a bit), but I was just curious if the Terrifier short was also changed, or is it exactly as it was in the original 2011 version?

From what I’ve gathered, it’s the original version of Terrifier. It’s the other shorts and wrap around that were either modified or created to match Terrifier because that was the one that got him attention.

And just to reiterate from the other thread, Terrifier 3 is the best of its franchise and I can confirm that Leone did his best to extricate Art’s sadism from misogyny into full fledged misanthropy.

In All Hallows Eve, it's both!

I have a lot of negative things to say about it! (And a few nice things, but what a letdown!)

Just to make sure the thread of thought here is clear, I didn't go from "A movie was violent against women, therefore the person who made it is misogynistic". I don't think anyone is saying that.

It goes like this: This movie was rolling along with a certain nature of interactions between the antagonist and his victims. As the film goes, you know, interesting that men are dying quick on-screen(1)/off-screen(2) deaths while women are being tormented. Alright. But then at the very end we are hit with violence that is very gendered in a way that doesn't fit with what has come before it. And I'd argue that if you're SO EXCITED to show , maybe take a beat. Like, good god, the movie makes a big deal about her being a costume designer! It feels lazy, and it's just a sad fact that laziness in horror often equates to the exploitation and degradation of female bodies. So I'm accusing Leone of laziness and lack of creativity--something that isn't misogyny, but looks a lot like it in the context of his film because he's inviting rubbernecking at this woman's body and suffering, not empathy.

To be fair, I did actually say that. And I may be wrong about it but I said it.
But I also wasn't just talking about violence against women I was talking specifically about the extremely gendered nature of it (particularly compared to the violence against men) including focusing heavily on the mutilation of women's bodies with angry misogynist language like "slut" or "c*nt" or (in Terrifier) the outright, graphic, mutilation of women's genitalia and breasts.
Seemed like even if Leone wasn't trying to say something he was kinda saying something. Though, honestly, I don't wanna beat a dead horse on this topic. I'm just clarifying that the response above was not wrong I did say it.

This is another one that's on every Halloween mix I've had since I was making them on cassette tapes. I can't ever let a Halloween pass without wearing it out... or without posting it in my Horrorthon.

Whoops! Sorry---I thought that response was directed at my original complaint about the film.

We'll clarify with Crumbs next time he resurfaces.

“This is an old house. There’s bound to be bumps in the night.”

This one was recommended by Daniel from The Cobwebs Channel, the only YouTube channel on Horror movies that I subscribe to... because he and I seem to have similar taste. So when he said, last year but after I'd already finished, this was No.1 on his annual "Top 10 Halloween Movies (You Might Not Have Heard Of)", I decided to give it a spin.

So, Peter is a sad kid. Yes this is a sad kid movie. His parents are very strict (very, very strict we begin to learn), he's bullied viciously at school, and he hears things go bump in the night. And when these bumps start to whisper to him, the game's afoot. Who are his parents and what have they done...


...and who or what is whispering from inside the walls?
Well, this movie took one of the two turns I thought could be coming and it was the one that was more likely, but I still liked it. This is not an ambitious movie but it does get fairly whacky before it gets where it's going. And it definitely made me uncomfortable more than once. But it's just a movie telling a quaint but creepy October story. I think it’s a good little story to be told and I thought it was pretty well put together in most aspects. Pretty good-looking movie for one with a washed-out color-palette, lots of well-composed shots and transitions. It's well-acted, with Lizzy Caplan nearly stealing the movie until Anthony Starr (The Homelander from The Boys) is allowed to try and steal it back. I have really nothing to complain about here unless maybe some of the late-movie design and effects could have been even a little better. But I think this is really just a matter of whether or not you liked the story, period. And I think I did. Actually kinda gave me the willies.

So, is it a good Halloween movie. Well, yes, if you like movies that take place on Halloween in a house that is literally in the middle of a pumpkin patch.