Day 24 of Horror Movie Month: Angel Heart (1987)

This movie was so goddamn haunting and heavy to watch. It’s a great noir film with supernatural elements where Mickey Rourke is a 1950s private detective named Harry Angel hired by a mysterious man named Louis Cypher (Robert DeNiro) to find a musician named Johnny Favorite, who owes a debt to him. It sends him on this twisted journey into New Orleans, into the world of voodoo, and unexplained murders of everyone that Angel questions.

I had gone into this only knowing of Lisa Bonet’s role and a controversial sex scene between her and Rourke that was pretty nuts to watch, but the whole eerie, haunting vibe to the film got under my skin. Even though I figured out what was really up about midway through the film, that only made me dread the horror even more, and the ending was just bleak as hell. It’s a great film, and an underappreciated performance by Robert DeNiro, who plays his role with such quiet calm with an intimidating backstory.

Day 23 of Horror Movie Month: May (2002)

I randomly came across this late at night on HBO, and had a “what the hell is this?” feeling all throughout before freaking out at the end. It’s a tale of a socially awkward young woman who becomes emotionally attached to anyone who shows interest in her, then murders them when they leave her, piecing their body parts together in her own doll a la Frankenstein’s monster. It’s weird and messed-up, but darkly funny at times, and Angela Bettis is incredibly captivating as May with her Gothic doll looks, as a character who is attractive in her offbeat strange charm.

Day 22 of Horror Movie Month: Christmas Evil (1980)

This was one of the first DVDs I ever owned, next to Cannibal! The Musical. It’s a low-budget horror movie starring Brandon Maggart (also the father of Fiona Apple and Maude Maggart) as a depressed toy maker who makes a list of good and bad kids, is haunted by bad childhood memories, and suffers a breakdown at work after being belittled and goes on a killing spree dressed as Santa Claus.

It’s an odd movie that definitely feels of its time, it’s very early 80’s on a low budget. Maggart brings a lot of sympathetic heart to his role, where you can connect with him despite that he becomes a killer in the end. I haven’t seen it in many years, but I remembered liking it as a weird little Christmas horror movie with some care put into it.

Bonus for Horror Movie Month: 10 Cloverfield Lane (2016)

This was such a great tense, claustrophobic thriller. I was really sucked into this story, of a young woman (Mary Elizabeth Winstead) being held captive in an underground bunker by a paranoid conspiracy theorist (John Goodman), telling her that the air is toxic outside due to a chemical attack, and she can’t decide whether to escape outdoors in case he is lying, or being trapped with his unpredictable wrath as a captor if the air is unbreathable out there. Goodman was so chilling and unnerving, and it’s amazing how terrifying he can be when he’s just quiet and staring down someone. And I’ve always thought Winstead was a great actress who has blown me away in several of her roles, yet she remains pretty underrated in terms of popular actresses. I really loved this film a lot, it’s an excellent tight thriller.

Day 21 of Horror Movie Month: Crawlspace (1986)

I caught this on the El Rey Network a few years ago, and this weirded me out a lot. Because the villain is played by Klaus Kinski, I did go in expecting him to be a creep, and he certainly delivered. This is about a guy who runs a boardinghouse for women and spies on his tenants through crawlspaces and murders them. It’s weird and uncomfortable to watch, and Kinski’s reputation in real life for having been violent and abusive to his family and colleagues only just makes his performance that much more visceral as a crazed obsessed murderer. In addition, he is the son of a Nazi doctor and has the house rigged so that women became trapped in small spaces and torture devices. It’s a creepy movie, but very memorable and interesting to watch.

Day 20 of Horror Movie Month: The Changeling (1980)

I only just saw this last year at the Metrograph, and really liked it a lot as an eerie ghost story. George C. Scott plays a composer grieving the loss of his family after a car accident, and moves to an old mansion near Seattle. He starts to feel the presence of a ghost boy, which reminds him a lot of his late little girl, and he does investigating to find out the hidden backstory behind the boy’s death, including the secrets of a prominent local family. I really liked how old-fashioned this film felt, like a classic haunted house movie, and got into the story a lot and found it captivating.

Day 19 of Horror Movie Month: Tales From the Crypt: Demon Knight (1995)

This movie is so goddamn fun to watch. It’s a great blend of horror and comedy, with this weird dark badass vibe combined with the right kind of comedic timing, likable characters who you don’t want to see die, a talented cast of character actors (Billy Zane, CCH Pounder, Thomas Haden Church, William Sadler, Dick Miller, Brenda Bakke, Charles Fleischer), a solid heroine in Jada Pinkett Smith, and a charismatic villain in Billy Zane. It’s got a hell of an opening song in Filter’s “Hey Man Nice Shot,” and it just makes me happy when I watch it, it’s my right kind of cult horror comedy.

Day 18 of Horror Movie Month: Fallen (1998)

This is a largely forgotten Denzel Washington movie that flopped, and I think it’s very eerie and chilling. It’s a supernatural thriller in which a fallen angel Azazel is possessing people to commit murder, passing through them by touch. Washington is a detective who starts off the movie by viewing the execution of a serial killer he put away (Elias Koteas in an excellent and haunting cameo), but then investigates murders that follow the killer’s M.O, and slowly uncovers this story about an evil spirit and his plans for destroying people out of revenge, including framing the detective for murders.

The running motif of the film is that whoever the angel possesses keeps singing or whistling The Rolling Stones “Time is on my Side” to taunt Washington, especially whenever the angel just jumps around bodies in a crowd by slightly brushing against people. The song is used in a very effective and creeping way, and I loved it.

I really got into this one a lot, and I found it suspenseful and interesting. Washington is great in this dark and weird thriller, and I remember feeling a little shaken by the end. I highly recommend this film if you ever come across it.

Day 17 of Horror Movie Month: Thirst (2009)

Thirst is a Korean vampire movie, and while I haven’t seen it in many years, I remembered thinking it was a really interesting and weird movie. Directed by Park Chan-Wook, it’s about a Catholic priest who gets injected with a bad blood transfusion after he volunteers to be a test subject in a medical experiment, becoming a vampire. He steals blood from the hospital to survive, and ends up in this intense relationship with a woman in a bad marriage, where they become a twisted and unlikely pair. I really should watch it again to better remember the film, but I thought about it because it was this fun strange vampire movie that I enjoyed ages ago.

Day 16 of Horror Movie Month: Pumpkinhead (1988)

This film is so atmospheric, and I loved how it’s an urban legend horror movie that is largely about grief and loss, and the futility of getting revenge. Lance Henriksen gives a great performance as an angry father whose son was killed in a hit and run by out of town teens, and calls upon a monster called Pumpkinhead to exact revenge, as an extension of his grief and anger. But even all the bloody killings doesn’t ease him, it only gives him more physical pain, as a metaphor for his grief killing him inside.

It’s a stunning film directed by special effects legend Stan Winston, with a truly imposing monster creation, and it really stuck out as a unique and eerie horror film that truly affected me.

Day 15 of Horror Movie Month: Frailty (2001)

Bill Paxton’s directorial debut in this psychological thriller was way better than I had expected. Like Stir of Echoes, this was something I thought would just be an average thriller, but ended up being way more creepier and more suspenseful than I realized. The story is told in flashback by the adult son of Paxton (played by Matthew McConaughey), telling a detective about his father, a deeply religious widower who became convinced that demons were among people under human guise, and, thinking he’s carrying out God’s work, becoming a serial killer of innocent people and bringing his two young sons into it. It’s really unnerving to see how much the father convinces himself that he’s saving the world while creating a serial killer pattern, and how much his religious zealousness affects his sons, one who blindly supports the cause and one who is horrified but cannot stop him.

I loved how the film was way more about the horror of family abuse than any actual monsters, and how helpless children can feel when their parents are demanding them to follow their authority and not question them at all. It’s a really chilling film that shook me up inside, and was a fantastic find to come across.

Day 14 of Horror Movie Month: Ravenous (1999)

I only just watched this recently, but thought it was a lot of fun as a cannibal horror comedy, and wanted to include it. It’s a slept on film starring Guy Pearce and Robert Carlyle, and it’s about a military outpost in the 1840s that gets destroyed by a cannibal, and the inner battle between one soldier who has tasted human meat and the cannibal trying to convert him, much like a vampire, touting the health benefits of strength and virility. It’s very funny and ridiculous, with great performances, and was just really enjoyable to watch.

Day 13 of Horror Movie Month: 28 Days Later (2002)

I haven’t seen this film in ages, but I remember being pretty blown away by it on its release. I don’t know what it was exactly, but it was incredibly gripping and felt grounded in realism. The post-outbreak sequence of an empty London is stark and uncomfortably quiet, and the finale in a military station is chilling and presents a all-too-real future for women to be raped and abused in times of war.

Cillian Murphy was good in this, but Naomie Harris was the absolute star of this film. I loved her no-bullshit survivor attitude as Selena, and how she felt like a real person and not a horror “Final Girl” archetype, especially whenever she got frustrated with someone or was distrustful or cried out of exhaustion. I know she’s done a lot since then, but this is always the role I’ll associate her with.

I knew of Christopher Eccleston a little bit from Elizabeth and Jude, and found him cold and frightening in his military role in essentially wanting to rape the two available females to re-populate society after the infection outbreak. When he got more popular a few years later with Doctor Who, I really found it hard to accept him as the cheerful, optimistic Doctor because I still had the mental image of him as an ice-cold villain, so it took a while for me to warm up to him, pun intended.

Day 12 of Horror Movie Month: The Monster Squad (1987)

I had seen this when I was likely five or six on video, and I really liked it a lot, even though I was too young to really remember the whole movie. I saw it again when I was 24, and loved it. I was taken aback by how much swearing the kids do in the film, but besides that, it’s really fun, the movie is really quotable (everyone quotes “Wolfman’s got nards,” but I prefer several lines over that), Duncan Regher has a really great, stately presence as Dracula and is taking the role very seriously in a kids’ movie (and Liam Neeson was thisclose to getting the role), the kids are fun, and I just love how it’s a dear tribute to the Universal monsters or director Fred Dekker’s childhood. The movie now has all this cult love, but I never heard anyone talking about it growing up, I only have heard more people talk about it in the past decade.

Day 11 of Horror Movie Month: Eyes Without a Face (1959)

A French horror film from the late fifties, this is an intriguing and startling film shot in beautiful black and white cinematography about a doctor trying to repair his daughter’s damaged face from an accident he caused, by murdering young girls to rebuild her face. It’s strange and weird to watch, and most likely had influence on Pedro Almodovar’s The Skin I Live In, a film with a partly similar plot. I haven’t seen it in ages, and feel like it’s a movie I only want to watch once, but it’s definitely a standout in horror cinema.

Day 10 of Horror Movie Month: Invaders From Mars (1986)

This was Tobe Hooper’s remake of the 1950s horror film, and made for Cannon Films as part of his three picture deal, with three films that all bombed hard: this one, Lifeforce, and Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2.

I had seen Invaders From Mars as a kid, but never knew the name until just a few years ago, I did a Google search of plot points to figure it out. I really liked it a lot as a kid, and it still holds up as a decent movie. The basic plot is that an alien spacecraft has landed in a small town, hiding under sand dunes, and pulling random people in, taking over their bodies with small punctures to the back of their necks, and sending them back out again as placid and compliant people. A little boy and a school nurse (Karen Black) suspect something’s up, and they are fighting to save the town from being controlled. I was weirded out as a kid by the scenes of people sucked in under the sand, and that was my major memory of the film. I included it here as a random B horror movie I had come across as a kid and enjoyed.

Day 9 of Horror Movie Month: Body Bags (1993) and Tales From the Darkside: The Movie (1990)

I couldn’t choose between these two delightfully weird horror anthology movies, so I made this a double header. I love how pulp and bizarre these movies are. Tales from the Darkside is unofficially Creepshow 3, due to a bunch of production drama, and I love the variety of stories, from a grad student resurrecting a mummy for revenge, to a hit man vs. a killer cat, to a failed artist being terrorized by a gargoyle’s curse. And Body Bags features John Carpenter as a Beetlejuice/Cryptkeeper host, with a great story of a woman fending off a serial killer on her work shift at an empty gas station at night, to a balding man getting the Monkey’s Paw treatment when he miraculously grows hair, to a baseball player with a disturbed eye. I highly recommend both films if you like pulp horror stories with a decent cast of famous names.

Day 8 of Horror Movie Month: Hush (2016)

This was a really interesting home invasion thriller about a deaf writer being terrorized by a killer outside her home, and finding ways of survival while not being able to hear or use her voice for help. It was creative and suspenseful, in that she is able to use her disability as an advantage, plus her own ingenuity, and both she and the killer equally get roughed up and go through a lot of pain and struggle, which made it feel a lot less one-sided. This film deserved a lot more attention as a standout thriller in recent years, and was directed by Mike Flanagan (Oculus, Gerald's Game, The Haunting of Hill House).

Day 7 of Horror Movie Month: The Little Girl Who Lives Down the Lane (1976)

This isn’t technically a horror movie, but I found it creepy and uncomfortable to watch. Jodie Foster is an adolescent girl who lives alone in her father’s home, keeping the secret about his absence with excuses to the landlady. She’s a typical 70’s latchkey kid, managing her own life, when Martin Sheen as a pedophile starts creeping around and tries to build a relationship with her. He is suspecting that she’s lying about her parents’ absences and is terrorizing her, but she has her own upper hand against him. It’s a really weird thriller, but is anchored by the great performances by Foster and Sheen, and just stood out as a interesting little movie with a very “of its time” premise.

Day 6 of Horror Movie Month: Return of the Living Dead 3 (1993)

This is likely one of the most romantic horror movies I’ve ever seen. It’s a Romeo and Juliet story with zombies, and I loved the combination of the sweet teen romance between two punk kids and the excellent makeup and special effects work put into this. Melinda Clarke was fantastic as the heroine Julie, with stunning eyes and a total gameness to look weird while playing the role with a lot of heart and compassion. The final reveal of her transformation is really badass in a BDSM kind of way.

Day 5 of Horror Movie Month: Bride of Chucky (1998)

This is one of my favorite horror comedies, and next to the first two movies, my favorite in the Child’s Play franchise. I really love the heavy metal vibe of it, the use of Rob Zombie music in two scenes (particularly a cute and hilarious moment of Chucky rocking out to some White Zombie), and the great chemistry between Brad Dourif and Jennifer Tilly as demented lovers Chucky and Tiffany.

Tilly in particular just owns this movie. She just dives right into the self-aware dark comedy of it all, and just relishes playing a sexy psychopath stuck in a doll body, done up 90’s biker chick style in a leather jacket, bridal gown, and bleached blonde hair. I don’t care about the plot with Katherine Heigl and her boyfriend or any of the other stuff, it’s just the scenes between Dourif and Tilly that give the film its most fun and heart as a joyfully weird horror comedy.

Day 4 of Horror Movie Month: Stir of Echoes (1999)

I didn’t go into this movie expecting much, but I was blown away by how good this film was. Kevin Bacon plays his character with this lived-in blue collar warmth that made the guy just feel like a neighbor you’d know, and the psychological thriller really had this creeping vibe that pulled me in. He plays a guy who gets hypnotized as a party game, despite his skepticism, then starts seeing strange visions that correlate with the disappearance of a local teen girl, so he is trying to piece the mystery together, obsessionally digging holes to try to find her. This movie was just way better than I expected, and was a great surprise to come across.

Day 3 of Horror Movie Month: Inside (2007)

Inside is a French horror film, and likely one of the most brutal films I’ve ever seen. A young pregnant widow is being terrorized by another woman on Christmas Eve, trying to invade her home to kill her and cut out her baby, as the then-current Paris riots are going on in the background. Beatrice Dalle as the intruder is psychotically fantastic, as she just had this twisted mouth and intense eyes, and the movie just does not care about the audience’s comfort at all while watching it, it’s incredibly bloody and violent and visceral. I really found this film to be incredibly tense and rough to watch, and have only seen it once, but thought it was incredible.

Day 2 of Horror Movie Month: The Others (2001)

This is just a really good ghost story. I loved the gothic vibe of it, and how it felt so isolated and self-contained. It takes place in the 1940s, but has a Victorian Gothic style to it. Nicole Kidman was just fantastic as she becomes more determined to protect her children from danger and being more paranoid about ghostly presences in their house by the sea. She is fixed with worry over her husband in the war, her children with their light sensitivity diseases, and feeling stuck in her own head. It’s spooky and eerie and I adore it.

Day 1 of Horror Movie Month: Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer (1986)

This is likely the scariest horror film I’ve ever seen. This movie shook me up a lot because it’s shot and acted in such a cold and remote way, and was disturbing to me, it felt like a snuff film to me. I first saw it at a midnight movie screening when I was 23, and walked out feeling traumatized. I had to keep reminding myself that it wasn’t a documentary. I watched it again years later online, and still felt really uncomfortable with it. It’s a great film, and Michael Rooker was chilling as the serial killer, but this definitely left a lasting impression on me.