The Lost Boys

Happy Halloween, everybody! It’s October 31st, and we’ve got one last Halloween Haunter to discuss before November rolls around and the blog returns to some semblance of normalcy, at least for a few weeks. While this month has been filled with an awful lot of pain and agony — on the part of your friendly neighborhood blogger more than the characters in these horror movies — for the big day I’m finishing on a relatively strong note, the 1987 vampire movie, The Lost Boys.

The Lost Boys is the story of brothers Michael and Sam (Jason Patric and Corey Haim), who are moving with their mother, Lucy (Dianne Wiest) to their grandfather’s home in Santa Carla after she has divorced their father. Lucy insists they’re going to love Santa Carla, but Sam can’t help but notice the welcome sign has been graffiti’d to add “Murder Capital of the World”. Not an encouraging sign. They get to their grandfather’s place, and after a brief freakout at his taxidermy shop, they settle in and get ready to adjust to their new lives and the eccentricities of their grandpa (Barnard Hughes).

Soon they begin to explore the boardwalk of Santa Carla, and all three transplanted family members find something that will become important to their immediate futures.

Trick or Treat (1986)

There are important lessons to be learned when you’re picking out movies to watch (or, as in this case, when your brother picks out a movie for you to watch. Thanks, Jake!) Looking at the DVD case for this film, at least the bare-bones 2003 edition, one could easily get the wrong impression of it. The cover features hard rock musicians Gene Simmons and Ozzy Osbourne, as they appear today, and gives them top billing over Marc Price (“Skippy” from Family Ties). It’d be pretty easy to dismiss this as a film guaranteed to be terrible, but hopefully cheesy, when starring two rockers who not only aren’t actors, but are known for being more than a little addle-pated. But in truth, the two of them barely have cameos in the film, making this a case where after-the-fact marketing has decided to cash in on their celebrity status in disproportion to their actual roles in the film. And, despite some flaws, this is actually a pretty watchable film.

Marc Price plays Eddie “Ragman” Weinbauer, a teenaged metal-head going through a rough time at Lakeridge High School. Most of the kids there aren’t into the metal scene, or at least not as much as Eddie, and he’s very much the outcast. Most of the girls think he’s creepy, and the jerk jocks, led by Tim (Doug Savant, who played the similar Brad in Teen Wolf) go out of their to harass him in the most humiliating fashions possible. They sabotage his school lunch, they play keep-a-way with his cassettes, and at one point they shut him out of the boy’s locker room, naked, in front of the girls’ volleyball team. When he crashes a pool party, they even put a weight in his backpack and shove him in. Eddie’s ready to explode, promising that he’s going to “nail” these guys one way or another. He has only a few sources of solace; his best friend Roger (Glen Morgan, in his sole acting role; he’d go on to write Final Destination), and his crush Leslie (Lisa Orgolini), but she only becomes aware of him after the nudity incident, and he initially feels set up by her as she was the one who invited him to the party. Mostly, though, he takes solace in the music of Lakeridge alumnus Sammi Curr (Tony Fields), a heavy metal maniac who shocks politicians and parents with his vulgar lyrics and Satanic stage act. Eddie feels a connection to Sammi, as someone who rose above the school bullying.

And then Sammi dies in a hotel fire he set himself.

Raiders of the Living Dead

There are certain films where, from the moment you hear of them, you know exactly what you’re going to get. Films where the quality of the work is never in doubt for a second. Films where your heart immediately flutters at the thought that you will be able to view such a perfect specimen of its type. Raiders of the Living Dead is such a film. From the moment I read its title, a clear riff on both the adventure classic Raiders of the Lost Ark and the horror classic Night of the Living Dead, I knew that this was a film I had to see. I knew what I would be getting when I dug up this obscure 1986 film: a solid half-pound brick of cheese. And while the film did disappoint slightly by being a mild Colby instead of a nice smoky Gouda, it’s still a worthy contender for any group of movie watchers that feels that a movie marathon should be a metaphorical fondue party. Just look at that poster; you have to love any movie that has such an awesomely ludicrous poster.

Vampyr

Vampyr is a nearly-silent German film from 1932; director Carl Theodor Dreyer was mostly used to working with silent movies, and while there is a smattering of dialogue (in German, though both subtitled and dubbed versions are available in English), much of the story is told in silent movie fashion, with title cards providing occasional dumps of exposition.

The film has come to be viewed as a classic monster movie, having a 100% among critics rating on RottenTomatoes.com, and it has been released as part of the Criterion Collection of films on DVD. It is not as well known as the 1922 classic Nosferatu (and in my opinion, it’s an inferior film as far as the narrative goes), nor of course the Bela Lugosi classic Dracula, but in some ways it forms the third part of a triumvirate of what forms the modern vampire. (I haven’t seen Dracula in full yet, but I’ve seen bits and pieces, and of course it’s become a staple of pop culture references.)

Night of the Demons (1988)

The original Night of the Demons (I have to specify, since as both an 80s movie and a horror movie, it has obviously been remade) starts off very strong. The opening sequence features a rocking but eerie tune from early 80s rock band Bauhaus, letting you know that this is going to be a fun romp with some freaky scares. The title sequence is lengthy and filled with animated drawings of ghosts and ghouls that have a serious nostalgic feel to them, reminiscent of all those Halloween decorations from the era that people would hang on doors and windows. It all really does a great job of getting the viewer amped up to watch the movie.

Why am I spending a paragraph writing about the opening title sequence? Well, it’s not like I really want to think about the movie so much, come on.

The Bat (1959)

The Bat, starring Vincent Price and Agnes Moorehead (Endora from Bewitched), is the third film version of a 1920 Broadway play. Moorehead plays Cornelia van Gorder, a renowned mystery author (reminiscent of Agatha Christie) who has rented a mansion in the small town of Zenith for the summer. Van Gorder has moved into the mansion with her maid, Lizzie (Lenita Lane), but quickly loses most of her staff due to them walking out after hearing about the goings-on in town the past winter. The mystery author has found herself in the middle of a mystery; there is a serial killer in town known only as “The Bat” who appears to be at large once again.

Halloween (1978)

I’ve been trying to find a good horror movie all month. Ladies and gentlemen, we finally have a winner here! I was beginning to lose hope there for a while. But it just goes to show that every once in a while, the classics of a genre are indeed classics. Halloween should be a template for how to make a decent horror film; sadly, while there are many films which ape it, most of them seem to take the wrong lessons to heart.

The first of several films under the Halloween franchise introduces us not only to the character of Michael Myers, but to the movie career of Jamie Lee Curtis. On Halloween night, 1963, then-child Michael Myers picked up a kitchen knife and stabbed his sister to death. 15 years later, he is still a local bogeyman to the town of Haddonfield, Illinois, where his house is abandoned and rumored by children to be haunted. Myers himself is in an institute for the criminally insane, and hasn’t spoken a word since the murder.

Naturally, the night before Halloween, he escapes.

Seasonal Shuffle

Just a quick “admin” post here. It’s one week before Halloween, so it’s time for the Halloween blog banner that’s been gracing all my spookier-themed posts to take over the main blog page as well, along with a nice pumpkin background. After October 31st, it’ll revert to normal, but the Halloween banner will remain in place on all of the horror movie and Halloween posts.

Speaking of which, I’ve shuffled the Halloween horror movie reviews into their own category, Halloween Haunters. While it’s still certainly possible I’ll review horror movies the rest of the year (it’s not as though most of them are specifically tied to the season, after all), October’s really the only time I go looking for them. Since my Halloween horror spree is a deliberate thing, I figured it made sense to categorize them separately. Plus, this frees up the Halloween tag for those items that are specifically related to Halloween, such as a certain 1978 movie that I expect to be getting to in the next day or so.

Puppet Master

If there’s one description that inspires even less confidence in a film than “made for TV”, it’s “direct to video”. Sure, producer Charles Band stated he could make more money on this film in the direct market than in theatres. But… actually, I don’t really need a counterpoint there, do I? He kind of did my work for me there. It’s hard to snark at someone that sets himself up so effortlessly.

With some rather obvious inspiration from Child’s Play, 1989′s Puppet Master is a horror movie playing on the common sense of unease that people have with puppets. Horror films are about scaring people, people find puppets creepy, it’s a logical enough fit. Except, of course, for the minor detail that even the creepiest puppet looks silly when it’s subjected to stop-motion animation. As I’ve said earlier, it’s hard to give a horror film credit when it looks ridiculous.

Sadly, that’s not the most ridiculous thing about this movie.

Plan 9 From Outer Space

There are some films that become legendary among fans of the medium. Films which are renowned because of their plots, their direction, the acting within them. Of course, that renown isn’t necessarily positive, and there are many films which are remembered solely because of how phenomenally terrible they are. Many of those films were directed by Ed Wood, Jr., and his best-known and worst-reputed film is 1959′s Plan 9 From Outer Space, a movie often brought up in discussions of what movie should be considered the worst film ever made. So naturally, I had to watch it and find out just how bad it is.

Criswell’s prediction? PAIN.