THE ARROW’S AND ERIC RED’S
2005 HALLOWEEN PICKS
THE ARROW SAYS:
Halloween meant a lot to me as child, I loved dressing up, getting
candy and throwing the apples handed out to me back into the donors face. As a
teen and now an adult (or so I hear) Halloween means; surrounding myself with my
best friends,
dressing up, and getting smashed …to then finish it all off with some groovy horror
movies. This
Halloween, I’m going with 4 “Party Movies” and 2 “Scare me shitless” opus’ to
finish the run off. Nothing caps a
Halloween night like these bad boys!
NIGHT OF THE DEMONS
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A group of teens are invited to a Halloween party by Goth
dame Angela (Kinkade). The snag is that the ” soiree” is at “Hull House” a place
with a gruesome history. Faster than you can say “cheese whiz”, teens get
possessed, others murdered and lots of breasts pop out. My kind of party! YEEHAW!
How does raunchy (and disturbing…) female nudity, a nasty
wrap around story with an old bitter man, mucho creepy scenes (Angela floating…brrr),
and ample inventive gore set pieces sound to you? EXACTLY! It sounds great! Add
to that the “special spice” which was Tenney’s fly by your pants direction and a
groovy use of the Bauhaus ditty “Stigmata Martyr” and
you get a healthy serving of horror juice. Much like a dim-witted call girl Night of the Demons didn’t
pretend to be anything else than a sexy and grisly good time. Nothing wrong with
that. This baby makes my Halloween Night hit list every year! SEE IT!
MAXIMUM OVERDRIVE
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A comet circling earth’s orbit turns all of our machines
(especially trucks) into “self-thinking”, murderous entities. Will the fine
folks at “Dixie’s Truck Stop” survive the mechanical nightmare?
Written and directed by genre author STEPHEN KING, “Maximum Overdrive” is an amusing
and underrated kitschy film. It has some good ideas, some occasional corny
dialogue (that elevate the fun tacky level of the film), some really nice
explosions (everything blows up…yippee!) and some nasty gory moments (when
trucks hit humans, they go SPLAT!). It’s not the smartest film ever made but
then again: IT’S ABOUT KILLER TRUCKS! What did people expect? An Oscar worthy
monologue about technology and its pitfalls? F*CK THAT! Give me my Estevez and
my “Green Goblin” rig over that any day! Perfect Halloween fodder with beers and
friends in tow!
TRICK OR TREAT
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Picked on “metal-head” Eddie (Price) resurrects his
recently dead rock idol Sammy Curr (Fields) by playing his last record
backwards. The un-dead head-banger goes on a killing spree sporting tighter than
tight leather pants and one hell of a shaggy doo. “Long Live Rock ‘n Roll”!
The first hour of this flick had me grinning like a metal
head sniffing glue. The story is told through an array of slick shots and hard
hitting metal tunes (Fastway baby Fastway!)…. I was in “style” heaven. The lead Eddie (Price)
was a
3-dimensional character and iwasvery likeable. I felt for the dude. The film’s
build-up is rock solid and the situations are all presented with a pinch of
wicked ass humor. Witnessing Eddie contact the spirit of Sammy (Fields) and getting
supernatural help with his “social” problems was mucho engaging and sometimes
kind of creepy. Yes, the film had me by the jewels and then some. FUN CHEESE!
NIGHT OF THE CREEPS
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An
alien experiment is dumped into space and lands on earth. The experiment:
ALIEN SLUGS. They enter through your mouth, nest in your brain, turns you into a
zombie and then split your head open when they hatch.
They don’t make ’em like this anymore. Director Fred Dekker gives us a
very kool prologue set in the 50’s, a believable love story, witty dialogue,
crazy zombie/slug action and a great anti-hero in the form of badass cop Roy
Cameron (Atkins). Dekker obviously loves
horror films cause we’ve get references up the wazzoo. All the main
characters are named after
horror directors: Carpenter, Hooper, Raimi, Cameron, Cronenberg etc. And we
also get two nods to “Ed Wood’s” “Plan 9 From Outer Space”. I’ll let you guy’s
find them. This is has to be one of the most satisfying horror flicks I have
ever seen. It’s the “Pulp
Fiction” of
horror movies. GREAT F*CKING TIMES!
THE ENTITY
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A single mother (Hershey) sees her normal, everyday life
crumble when she repeatedly gets attacked and raped by an unseen spirit. She
turns to a psychologist for help (Silver) but he thinks it’s all in her head.
The rapes continue until she hooks up with a team of parapsychologist who try to
help her get rid of the violent poltergeist.
What makes this film very effective is that it’s grounded
in a reality that we all can relate too (like Poltergeist and The Exorcist). Carla
is an ordinary woman, living in an ordinary house, living an ordinary life. The
film has many shocking rape scenes (that some reviewer thought exploitive…I
didn’t) and they’re not pleasant to witness. The violence is very real and the
aggressive score that plays when they happen make the scenes even more visceral.
You really feel for Hershey’s character and want her to get out of it so bad.
This one always scares the EVER LIVING SHITE out of me. End your Halloween night
with this one and get ready to be spooked! SCARY!
SUSPIRIA
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A cute American student (Harper) gets more than ballet
slippers and a tap on the ass when she attends a reputed European ballet school
to perfect her skills. To her dismay, folks around her start dropping like flies
on grey velvet and she eventually uncovers a spooky coven of witches. Let the
ride begin!!! {sings Suspiria Goblins song} La- La- La- La- La- La- La-….La- La-
La- La- la- la- La…
“Suspiria” was ahead of its time in its cosmetic ambitions
and fantastic audio tendencies. Argento crafted an immortal and brilliant horror
masterpiece with this film, one that should not be touched, should not be remade
or altered but one that should be admired and respected because yes, it still
holds up like a cauldron of severed head stew today. Personally, “Suspiria” is
more than just a film for me; it’s the “Michael Angelo” of
horror movies. I always go back to it when I’m hungry for an “eyes glued to
the screen” experience or when in dire need of inspiration. From the bottom of
my grave I say; thank you Mr. Argento for this priceless piece of genre art. GET
THE BONG FOR THIS ONE!
HAPPY HALLOWEEN FROM THE ARROW!
ERIC RED SAYS:
Halloween brings
back memories of the drive in triple horror features in New Jersey I saw as a
kid…the most fun I ever had the movies. Sadly, they’ve closed the last drive
ins on Sepulveda Boulevard here in L.A. and man, something’s lost. For my
Halloween horror viewing picks, I’m going with a good dose of 70’s drive in
fare, because these movies are so damn fun and they just don’t make ‘em like
this anymore…well, maybe that’s a good thing.
COUNT YORGA, VAMPIRE
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I love this film. A
vampire count moves to modern day Los Angeles and becomes involved with two
couples who don’t believe the undead really exists. The guys better catch on
fast, because Yorga wants the women! One of the best drive in movies of the
70’s, this remains an energetic and convincing contemporary vampire flick. The
star Robert Quarry is great as Count Yorga, creating one of most underrated
badass screen vampires and giving Christopher Lee a serious run for his money.
Quarry perfectly understood
the performance elements of the old school screen count, playing it with suit
and caped cool, menace, charm and authority, yet becoming primal bloodthirsty
animal force when in fang mode. A little dated by today’s standards, the film
is hampered by bad lighting and out of focus shots, but it all works. Count
Yorga’s shock attacks make you jump. The eating the cat scene is a still
jolting and I dig that long lens shot of the coffin in the back of the pickup
truck on the 405 freeway in the beginning, which really sold the whole modern
day vampire thing for me.
THE ABOMINABLE DR. PHIBES
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This picture is just
whacked. Vincent Price’s finest moment could be his role as the flamboyant and
droll Dr, Phibes, a caped, organ playing, frozen faced fiend who enacts baroque
vengeance on the team of London doctors who caused his beloved wife to die on
the operating table…he kills all of them according to the plagues of the old
testament! Campy grand guignol, it’s both funny and scary and this stylish
British film’s fab gaudy Art Deco sets and production design give it outré’ wit
and flair.
Price’s Dr. Phibes a
terrific creation…his face burned off, he wears a mask of his old face, acting
with rigor mortised facial muscles and speaking through a voice box he plugs
into an old record player (leading to memorable humor involving Price drinking a
glass of champagne through a hole in the side of his neck). The fun is
wondering how the next curse will be executed (locusts, anyone?) and seeing
inventive and grotesquely grisly death scenes Dr. Phibes engineers.
The frogs and the unicorn
are high points for me. The finale, where Phibes gives last doctor Joseph
Cotton minutes to surgically remove the key from inside the chest of his young
son to unlock him from the steel brace that holds the boy’s face under a tube of
slowly dripping acid is terrific horror suspense, and was an influence of the
O.R. shootout in my own “BODY PARTS.”
THE CONQUEROR WORM
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If witches burned at the
stake and swashbuckling costume gore are your Halloween pleasure, I recommend
this rousing (Edgar Allen Poe in title only) British film that stars Vincent
Price as the evil historical witchfinder Matthew Hopkins, who traveled from
village to village in rural England, falsely accusing innocent people of
witchcraft and executing them for monetary gain. When a pair of young lovers, a
handsome cavalryman and his lovely betrothed, cross paths with the Witchfinder,
Price accuses the girl of witchcraft, kills her family and kidnaps her.
The soldier goes after the
Witchfinder to put a cap in his ass and rescue his lady fair. Good, bloody,
gritty period exploitation film about powerful historical subject matter. The
nihilistic ending, where the hero and heroine are driven to insanity and
savagery in a gruesome showdown with the villainous Price and his sadistic
henchman in a torture chamber, really gets under your skin.
MAD DOCTOR OF BLOOD ISLAND
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One of the pioneer splatter
films. Back in the 70’s, drive in distributor Hemisphere produced a series of
unbelievably graphic and gory cheapjack Philippines horror pictures called the
Blood Island movies. They got zero cred at the time but have a gritty
aggressive brute force that holds up today, and deserve attention. There are
few films I’ve seen that can match this atmospheric if often poorly made series
for sheer gut busting stomach-churning splatter. Director Eddie Romero stages
the rank disembowelment violence with a battlefield reality style that fucks
with you. In this, John Ashley, an amiable Elvis Presley wannabee is a
government agent dude with sideburns and a pompadour.
He comes to an island in
the Philippines investigating some kind of heinous and nefarious shit of the
type that usually happen on jungle islands with mad doctors secretly funded by
U.S. drive-in movie companies. He hooks up with Angelique Pettijohn, a
big-breasted damsel in distress cutie for some bad acting and un-simulated sex.
Dr. Lorca, played with effective drug dealer style menace by Ronald Remy, has
been conducting experiments (the underground cave kind). There is this hideous
chloroform monster running around eviscerating (we’re talking ropes of
intestines wrapped around trees) local naked native girls.
It seems this blood and
rage maddened chloroform beast used to be one Don Ramon, patriarch of a
prominent local family, who disappeared after Dr. Lorca moved in on his wife and
fortune. And he is VERY pissed off about it. What’s left of Don Ramon’s wife
when the thing comes back to settle it’s score with her is one of the most
gruesome and nasty sequences in the splatter hall of fame. And the chloroform
monster still creeps me out. The film may be best remembered for its frenzied
pulsing zoom in zoom out P.O.V. shots of the monster (a goofy shot hilariously
lampooned by Joe Dante in “THE BURBS” with Tom Hanks.) For gore hounds only.
THE INCREDIBLE TWO-HEADED
TRANSPLANT
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Just gotta include this for
pure suckage. One of the best worst so bad it’s good movies ever made, with my
favorite exploitation title ever. A laugh riot as young Bruce Dern plays it
with conviction as a mad scientist who for no explicable reason is experimenting
with putting two heads on one body. He grafts the head of a psychotic killer
onto the body of a hulking moron. Hijinks ensues. Famously rotten effects…they
cast a really big fat guy so that the other actor playing the second head could
stand on a stool behind him to get the two head thing going.
Shot on location in the
producer’s house in Encino! Strangely enough, there’s something undeniably cool
to me about this grade Z movie monster, if only the movie had been as good as
the poster. Maybe it should be remade. Believe it or not, they released two of
these crapola two headed transplant opuses, the other being “THE THING WITH TWO
HEADS”. The tagline on that was “They transplanted a white bigots’s head onto a
soul brother’s body! They blew it!” Fantastic. I miss A.I.P.
IT’S THE GREAT PUMPKIN,
CHARLIE BROWN
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Okay, it’s not a drive in
movie, but I’ve watched this cartoon every October 31st for as long as I can
remember, because no Halloween would be complete without the Peanuts gang, and
Lucy is scarier than Freddy and Jason anyday. The good news for anybody reading
this, psychiatric help is still only 5 cents.
HAPPY HALLOWEEN FROM ERIC RED!
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