GIVE US YOUR HALLOWEEN MOVIE PICKS HERE!
Tomorrow is the day! No not the day your
girlfriend tells you she’s pregnant, not the day she says that she’s
keeping it or the day that you pack your bags and skip to another country to
live under an assumed name…. its HALLOWEEN baby!
A time where the spirits are
able to bust the living’s chops, where grown up mooks such as myself have
an excuse to dress up and act like morons
(SEE HERE), where children get to smile as they get
cavities from all that candy they’re munching on; yes, a great time indeed.
Writer/Director ERIC
RED and I digged deep within the graveyard that is our noggins
and here are the movies that we came up with as to ideal HALLOWEEN PICKS! So rent these babies tomorrow, get your buds over, squeeze that
hot girl (or dude) tight, hit the lights, gets scared, cop a feel, then tap
that Halloween Party! Here we go! Mr. Red…AFTER YOU!
ERIC RED’S 2007
HALLOWEEN RECOMMENDATIONS
GRIZZLY (1976)
Halloween means popcorn flicks and for pure junk food appeal
you can do a lot worse than “GRIZZLY.” This Super ‘70’s low budget Kentucky
exploitation flick has lots of juice and remains one of best of the “JAWS”
knockoffs. It revolves around a Forest Ranger, Helicopter Pilot and
Mountain Man who hunt for a gigantic man-eating grizzly bear in the woods
tearing the campers limb from limb. One towering bear, three guys, big
guns, lots of pretty scenery and splattered hikers and rangers. What’s not
to like?
The humongous, ferocious Grizzly bear is a truly frightening
and intimidating monster, provided by convincing animal training and scary
nature photography of the beast. We get some way gory kills, including
kids. One cool set piece has a ranger in a mountain top station helplessly
trapped as the bear shakes the tower down. And another near classic horror
scene has one of the main characters getting mauled, then buried by the
Grizzly, regaining mangled consciousness to dig himself out, only to have
the bear come back.
Keep your expectations in check as the script sucks and
the characters are cardboard, but Christopher George and
Richard Jaeckel
are affable and appealing good guys. The colorful widescreen photography is
big and dynamic and the forest outdoor locations are vivid. This is no
great film, or even a good one, but it’s fast and fun and made with
unpretentious regional filmmaking verve. And who doesn’t dig that cool Neal
Adams poster?
RAW MEAT (1973)
For a more substantial Halloween meal, and it requires a
strong stomach, I recommend the best cannibal film of all time with one of
the best horror titles ever. A cannibal is loose in the London subways, the
last survivor of a group of workers trapped in a tunnel collapse a hundred
years before. When his wife dies, the last surviving cannibal comes out of
hiding and kidnaps a pretty woman subway passenger to breed.
Her American
boyfriend hooks up with an irascible English police inspector to find her,
leading them into the bowels of the British tube underground. They come
face to face with remains of a subculture of homeless cannibals who have
been living off the flesh off the subway riders for a century. And last one
is not going to go quietly.
The film has superb camerawork and atmospherics, with the
subterranean slaughterhouse of a brick and gaslight dwelling and burial
ground of the cannibals like Charles Dickens on crack. Donald Pleasance
(‘HALLOWEEN”) is highly entertaining as the pugnacious working class
policeman, but as the last cannibal, Hugh Armstrong steals the show. Filthy,
diseased, pathetic and murderous yet with a tragic pathos, he is one of the
more memorable movie monsters I’ve seen.
The film’s high point is the
ghastly but moving final moments between the cannibal and his dying spouse,
as he vainly tries to feed her with blood. You really feel for this sad
figure, which is quite an accomplishment because he’s eating people! Also
of note is an incredible 10 minute unbroken zoom and tracking camera shot
that introduces the cannibals’ lair with a filmic flair comparing with Orson
Welles’ famous opening shot of ‘TOUCH OF EVIL.”
This unique, disturbing and haunting horror flick has been
shamelessly ripped off recently by “CREEP” and the upcoming “MIDNIGHT MEAT
TRAIN.” But the risky, audacious original is unsurpassed and has lost none
of its power to get under your skin…and start chewing.
THE ARROW’S 2007
HALLOWEEN RECOMMENDATIONS
SCARECROWS
(1988)
“Scarecrows” is one spooky
looking movie, with the field setting being bathed in dark atmosphere and
the titular scarecrows themselves being incredibly bone-chilling. Finally,
somebody took the scarecrow figure and interpreted it the RIGHT way to serve
a horror movie! You see, you don’t need $80 million bucks to make an effect
goosebump-inducing!
All you need is some materials and a strong dose of
imagination. Every time the camera would frame these damn Crow-Men in close
ups and keep on them for a few beats, I’d get a severe case of the
heebie-jeebies. CREEPY!
The flick itself was of the “old school” horror variety where suspense and
buildup were emphasized upon. If you need action by frame one, you’ll be
disappointed. Think “Night of the Living Dead”, but with scarecrows. The
physical shenanigans really started to kick in at about an hour in, but that
was fine by me. The movie had me by the throat the whole way with its subtle
horror ingredients, its twists and the whacked-out situation at hand.
The
momentum just kept increasing and increasing, until the pussy was let out of
the sack and the eerie scarecrows ran amuck. When slicing somebody open to
fill their bodies with straw usually comes up at a party, I’m always the
first one cheering and pouring beer on my head in approval. GREAT IDEA! See
this one on Halloween night and if you can, see the uncut version!
THE BURNING
(1981)
This illegitimate bastard
brother of Voorhees is a by-the-rules slasher, but does manage to be a
multitude of cuts above the rest due to its huge set of testies. Sure, we’ve
seen it all before, right down to the deformed loon on the rampage, the
campfire story, the woods setting, the killer POV shots and the
have-sex-go-RIP rule.
But in terms of its actual playground, The Burning is
extremely groovy stuff. I have to prop this sicko for not holding back in
the main spices that make a yummy slasher stew. Female tits and derrieres
are all over the screen (as they should be) and teens get nixed in the most
heinous, gory and messy ways through splendorous Tom Savini made kills.
YIPPEE!
For anybody who knows the
slasher formula as well as they know to count to 13, most of THE BURNING’s
plot turns will hold no surprises. But the enthusiasm behind the acts, did
offer me the fun times I craved nonetheless. The better than usual acting
(in slasher movies anyways), the well-written dialogue and the semi-novel
canoe trip setting (whiffs of Deliverance though) also helped make this
stroll a mucho enjoyable one.
But the cherry on top of this raw bitch is the
now infamous raft scene. It is by far the most memorable sequence in the
picture. Talk about cleaning house with panache! Voorhees would be proud and
dare I say envious of what this madman accomplished here! NICE!
