The Conjuring: Yes, it was scary. Musically surprising, too.

This past Friday, my pal Stacey and I went to see The Conjuring. Like Sinister before it, this film is helping restore my faith in horror movies. Like Insidious before it, this film was directed by James Wan and starred Patrick Wilson. (And others. But Patrick Wilson was reason enough to me to see this movie.). Based on the true story of paranormal research trailblazers Ed and Lorraine Warren's account of the Perron family possession of 1971, the film was off to a painfully slow start. But once the action started? OH BOY, hold onto your seat!

As a lifelong horror fan, it takes an awful lot to scare me, and most movies just don't anymore. In fact, many of the "scares" that elicited the audience screams you see in the trailers for The Conjuring came from a few instances of what movie critics refer to as "cheap scares," such as loud noises or sudden appearances of frightening faces/objects/etc (or harmless ones that leave you sighing in relief temporarily). Having said that, this movie isn't full of them, and they're not just there as an easy way out. They were necessary and well-placed, and I am assuming the events depicted happened to the family in real life. There is a tremendous amount of tension and dread leading up to the action. The whole story is fueled by a soundtrack that made my skin crawl - an insanely creepy score supplemented by some equally creepy (at least in the context of the movie) songs such as The Zombies' "Time of the Season" and Betsy Brye's "Sleep Walk." And a truly spooky song by Dead Man's Bones, "In the Room Where You Sleep."

What some of you may or may not know and find interesting (I know I did) is that Dead Man's Bones is actor Ryan Gosling's band. I was pleasantly surprised, and you might be too. This is not what I think of when I think of Ryan Gosling and music together.

"In the Room Where You Sleep" - Dead Man's Bones

Without getting overly spoiler-ish - go see it if you enjoy horror! The subject matter is something that just goes so much deeper than the axe-wielding-homicidal-maniac-on-the-loose. While I also love a good slasher flick, I much prefer horror that seeps in, wraps icy tendrils of fear around your psyche, preys on your emotions, and just doesn't let go. The Conjuring went a LONG way in doing that for me. It may not have absolutely terrified me - very few movies do - it did cause me to sleep with the light on that night. And if you know me, you know that's saying a lot.

CLAP CLAP!

Music Monday:

X-Mas Dolly
Run DMT
Be There 2Day
My So-Called Chaos

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Yay! It's Halloween!

And probably my favorite holiday of the year: the new horror releases in theaters, the ghosts, witches, goblins, vampires, pirates, book and movie characters out roaming the streets; the scary movies from Halloweens past on tv; the haunted houses/hayrides; the CANDY AND TREATS!

And....the 1978 John Carpenter film of the same name. Featuring Jamie Lee Curtis in her film debut (and also introducing us to the iconic blank, CREEPY white mask), Halloween was one of the highest-grossing independent films in recent history. Like Night Of The Living Dead, Halloween is also included in the Library of Congress's National Film Registry. I liked the film because, due to little violence and gore, it relied heavily on atmosphere, implication, and a compelling score. Halloween's main theme is one of the most widely recognized pieces of music associated with a horror film.

There's a lot of information up at the Wikipedia page I linked to, and it's all very interesting. Definitely sheds some light on why the movie was included in the National Film Registry. You should go read it! And tonight, if you're at home, you should watch Halloween.

Image Source: found at Best-Horror-Movies.com

2 days till Halloween!

We're getting closer and closer, y'all! And I think another movie is in order for today's post.

I think The Exorcist is hands-down the scariest movie I've ever seen in my life. ALL movies related to demonic possession and the Anti-Christ freak me out, but this one tops them all by far. It's also in the Library of Congress's National Film Registry, been named the "scariest movie of all time" by several different media outlets, and is one of the highest-earning movies of all time (source: Wikipedia).

As I've said before, I've pretty much always been allowed to watch horror films. Most of them never scared me beyond when I was actually watching the movie (and some didn't even scare me then, but I guess that's beside the point). But this one? Oh, my. I wasn't allowed to watch it for the longest time, and I think that was because my aunt had seen it in the theater (or the drive-in, I'm not sure which) when it was released and it really, really, REALLY scared and disturbed her. In fact, I've only ever seen the version shown on tv - and not even cable tv, but one of the "Big Three" television networks.

So I finally convinced my parents to let me watch it when I was about 12, and they sat right there beside me, and said that I MUST cover my eyes, or possibly even shut my eyes and stick my fingers in my ears whenever they told me to. Of course you all know I cheated, and watched all the graphic scenes through my eyelashes and didn't do a good job of plugging the sounds out of my ears, either. And it was hard sitting there trying to act like I wasn't seeing and hearing everything (at least the sounds, I probably couldn't tell you the actual words even to this day), when I had NEVER BEEN SO FREAKED OUT BY ANYTHING BEFORE IN MY ENTIRE LIFE!! And to be quite honest, the hold this movie had on me was probably due to the fact that it was touted at the time as being based on actual events.

I've since come to learn that the novel The Exorcist (upon which the film is based) was merely "inspired" by actual events. That's a world of difference, especially to an adult as opposed to a child. But things of this nature will always both intrigue and frighten me, as I truly believe there is so much out there in terms of good and evil spirits, energies, etc, and there are a lot of things that more practical people would dismiss that I just don't find that farfetched.

Image Source: Wikipedia

3 days till Halloween!

So I know what my final three movie selections for the countdown to Halloween to be, but I'm drawing a blank today for the fourth. I think instead, I'll focus on horror/supernatural/fantasy on television. There is so much good stuff out there these days! I started watching Supernatural way back, but for some reason didn't watch it beyond two seasons even though it was a good show. I think I'd like to play catch-up one of these days.....

In the meantime, here are some recent and/or current shows that I have enjoyed this past year or am enjoying right now:

1. The Walking Dead
2. The Vampire Diaries
3. The Nine Lives of Chloe King
4. Death Valley
5. Teen Wolf
6. True Blood
7. Game of Thrones
8. Being Human
9. The Secret Circle
10. American Horror Story (more on this one later, as I really, REALLY want to discuss it with other fans!)
11. Once Upon A Time
12. Grimm

Not to mention, I've enjoyed The Munsters, The Addams Family, Kolchak: The Night Stalker, The Twilight Zone, Tales From the Crypt, Night Gallery, and  Dark Shadows!  (And probably many, many, many more that I can't think of right off the top of my head.)  And I am very much looking forward to Hell On Wheels.

What are some of your favorite horror/supernatural/fantasy-based television shows, past or present?

Image source: Wikipedia

4 days till Halloween!

Let's have another movie, okay?

The first "documentary"-type horror movie I'd ever seen was The Blair Witch Project. What attracted me to this film was the way in which the movie was shot, promoted (more on that in a minute), and the Blair Witch's resemblance specifically to a tale of southern folklore that I'd grown up hearing about due to several families I knew who were related to the Bell family of Tennessee: The Bell Witch.

There was SO much hype surrounding this film at the time that even our local news devoted time to it, and a lot of internet promotion touted the film as actual recovered footage from events which really happened. In this respect, it was probably one of the first movies to build such hype over the world wide web in what is known today as viral marketing.

This movie was another one that didn't rely on gore and violence, but worked well with all the movie's other elements: the setting was creepy, with dark woods and sudden movements, bizarre and unnatural sounds as well as sudden, heart-stoppingly loud sounds, steadily escalating fear and paranoia, lots of motion sickness-inducing camera work, and some of the dialogue was unintelligible to me because of the way in which it was filmed.

Still, it is a pretty scary movie if you could manage to suspend your disbelief (because really, there is NO WAY three college kids could have just disappeared off the face of the earth and it not be mentioned anywhere by anyone) and just enjoy the "footage" as it was intended.

Image source: Wikipedia

5 days till Halloween!

There won't be any actors, actresses, or movies today, because today is all about the music. Long before (and even since) movies began featuring songs by popular artists on their soundtracks, the instrumental score was crucial to setting the right mood; inciting the right emotions. Here are some instrumental selections from various horror movie scores over the years. Some you'll probably immediately recognize

• Psycho Theme - Bernard Herrmann - Psycho

• Friday the 13th Main Theme - Henry Manfredini - Friday The 13th

• JAWS Main Theme - John Williams - JAWS (yes, it's a repeat from another post, but still deserves to be here!)

• Tubular Bells - Mike Oldfield - The Exorcist

• The Bride of Frankenstein Main Theme - Franz Waxman - The Bride of Frankenstein

• Halloween Theme - John Carpenter - Halloween

• Toccata and Fugue in D Minor - Johann Sebastian Bach - The Phantom of the Opera

• Ave Satani - Jerry Goldsmith -The Omen

Image source: PSD Graphics

6 days till Halloween!

My last post was all about the Scream Queens I adore. I've never heard the term "Scream Kings," but that's basically what this will be. The men who've made a mark in the genre or otherwise caught my attention in a horror movie in some way or another .

• Boris Karloff (Frankenstein) 

• Christopher Lee (Dracula - Hammer)

• Peter Cushing (Dracula  - Hammer)

• Lon Chaney Sr. (The Phantom of the Opera)

• Lon Chaney Jr. (The Wolf Man)

• Bela Lugosi (Dracula - Universal)

• Vincent Price (The Abominable Dr. Phibes, The Masque of Red Death, Edward Scissorhands (not horror, but still...), the voice and maniacal laugh in Michael Jackson's "Thriller," and so, so, so much more!)

And now, for a few more "recent" ones.....

• Bruce Campbell (Army of Darkness, Bubba Ho-Tep)

• Jackson Rathbone (and I don't mean for the Twilight Saga; he's also been in Pray For Morning, S. Darko, Hurt, and Dread - the latter two are actually decent and underrated thriller-types.)

• Alexander Skarsgard (True Blood.  Not horror to some of you, and certainly not a movie - but he stays!)

• Skeet Ulrich (Scream)

• Brandon Lee (The Crow)

And my favorite, not only in his horror movies, but in all his other movies as well:

Johnny Depp.  Most already know that he got his start as a Freddy Krueger victim in A Nightmare on Elm Street.  But he's also been in other horror and/or atmospherically dark films such as Freddy's Dead: The Final Nightmare, The Astronaut's Wife, Sleepy Hollow, The Secret Window, Edward Scissorhands, From Hell, Corpse Bride,  Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street, and The Ninth Gate.

That's a LOT of horror/thriller stuff for a pretty mainstream actor.  And on top of all that, he'll be playing Barnabas Collins in Tim Burton's upcoming Dark Shadows.  My favorite actor is playing the main characer in the movie version of one of my favorite childhood tv shows, and with Tim Burton directing, you know it'll be visually stunning. 

Image Source:  found at Strollerderby

8 days till Halloween!

I'm not really sure if you'd consider Jaws a true horror movie, but I'm slapping it up here anyway because it was a scary movie, it was bloody, and it really did make many people think twice about going into the water.

I can clearly remember seeing it for the first time: It was showing at our local drive-in and my parents took me with them. I'm not sure how I ended up going.....either my grandparents couldn't babysit, or I begged and pleaded till my Dad relented. The conditions were: 1) no asking questions, 2) no having to get food/drink/go to restroom every five minutes, 3) no talking. They probably figured at five years old, I'd be out cold before the first twenty minutes of the movie.

But they couldn't have been more wrong! The movie grabbed my attention from the opening scene. The movie probably really was too much for me, the concept of water was very familiar to me (I didn't ever really swim in swimming pools when I was little, but we mostly swam at the local lake), and I knew that there were big fish in the water. I didn't really understand the difference between lakes and oceans at five, but I took my parents' word for it that there were no man-eating sharks in the lakes we visited.

So the movie boasts plenty of action, terrifying moments, and got to moviegoers psychologically by taking something so many of us do, and see as relatively harmless (swimming), and reminded us that you never really know what might be lurking just under the surface. This was a movie where the monster was a REAL creature, as opposed to one based largely upon folklore, or a human monster. You can attempt to reason with a serial killer or maybe even the made-up monsters of the classic films, but you can't reason with a shark!

And who can forget the awesome Official Jaws Theme from John Williams?



This movie both scared the bejeezus out of me and excited me, and I credit it with starting my almost-lifelong fascination with sea creatures.

9 Days till Halloween!

And I figured it was a great day to give you more Johnny Depp (but really, when is it not a good day for Johnny Depp?) In The Secret Window, he plays a writer who retreats to his rural cabin in an attempt to deal with his writer's block and depression. And, as you might have guessed....he's keeping a pretty big secret.

Stephen King wrote the novella upon which this movie is based, and the movie definitely has King's creepy touch. You'll probably like this if you're a fan of Depp, King, or horror that isn't that scary.

Image source: Wikipedia

10 days till Halloween!

I don't know which movie to put up here today, as both The Prophecy, actually the first in a series of films, and Legion are very similar - angels fighting, trying to prevent the birth of a child who can save mankind, both having strong ties to North American deserts. Both films are more action than horror, in my opinion, with the Prophecy series being atmospherically the darker and more ominous of the two.

 
But religion has always been one of the things that interest me to no end, and anything having to do with the Bible's Book of Revelations is especially interesting, with all the predictions of doomsday, apocalypse and hell on earth. The thing about films such as this, even though they play mainly upon the fears of Christians, the "warnings" themselves can be taken in a number of different contexts depending on one's religion, or lack thereof.

Image source: Wikipedia

11 days till Halloween!

So the Scream Awards the other night were a bit underwhelming. Biggest WTF?!!? moment? Let Me In winning Best Horror Movie. Umm...I saw that. It wasn't scary at all! Or am I just too desensitized to all this by now?

Anyway...this horror movie series from the 80s brought out a new breed of killer - one who stalks you in your sleep! I loved A Nightmare On Elm Street not only for being a pretty cool slasher flick, but for all its camp, witticisms, and humor. And for giving us Johnny Depp! The sequels were all pretty decent, and the soundtrack to the third one (Dream Warriors) featured music by one of my then-favorites (and performers on the Monsters of Rock tour here in the U.S.), Dokken. Since that time, every Nightmare sequel has featured at least one metal band on its soundtrack.

You learn these things when you are a teenager and you have no social life!

Image source: Wikipedia

12 days till Halloween!

Since this was recently featured on AMC's Fear Fest, my mind is on The Hills Have Eyes. (The 1977 movie, not the remake - though the remake was okay.)

It's every traveling family's worst nightmare: a breakdown in the middle of nowhere and being terrorized through the night by a family of hungry, cannibalistic mutants - the most prominent one being played by Michael Berryman (the guy in the poster on the right). He probably looks familiar to you if you grew up watching MTV in the 80s, as he was the principal in Motley Crue's video for "Smokin' In The Boys Room."

I prefer this film to the recent remake, which was much more gory. I felt this one delivered better with tension!

Image source: Wikipedia

13 days till Halloween!

Today is the day I get to be "clever" (and not at all tired and obvious) by throwing the Friday the 13th franchise up here, with 13 days to go till Halloween. The only way this could actually be more clever (and tired and obvious) is if today actually fell on Friday the 13th.

So, I'm a fan of the series as a whole, even though some of the sequels were outright awful. My favorite of the series was the Friday the 13th Part III, first off because it was the first one I was actually able to see in a movie theater (our local theater always let junior high-aged kids and older into the theater without a parent). It was released in 3D, and I think it was also the first 3D movie I saw. I also liked it because it's the first one featuring Jason wearing the trademark hockey mask that you see in all the subsequent films.

You don't need me to tell you how popular and important a series this is in horror, so I'll just leave you with the links above if you care to check any of them out.

And in other news, Spike TV's Scream Awards will be on tonight! I am going out of town for a bit, so I will have to watch the encore presentation. I am so excited about this, I may even blog about it tomorrow. Maybe.

Image source: Wikipedia

14 days till Halloween!

Speaking of zombies, the "Godfather Of All Zombies," George A. Romero, directed a series of zombie films (beginning with Night of the Living Dead) which is probably the first taste anyone of my generation had of the amazing zombie movie! And one of the funny things is, the creatures in this film were not referred to as "zombies," and were not associated with voodoo the way zombies in White Zombie and some of the earlier zombie films were. Yet this movie gave birth to the zombie movie genre as we know it today.

With several sequels and remakes, Night of the Living Dead has inspired numerous filmmakers and makeup artists for generations, and has been included in the Library of Congress's National Film Registry.

Image source: IMDB

15 days till Halloween!

Long before the band came along, and even before the revered Romero flicks came along, there was an old b&w zombie film by the name of White Zombie. Starring Bela Lugosi as an evil voodoo master in Haiti, this film is considered the first feature-length zombie film (Wikipedia).

This is another of those movies that I watched as a little girl late at night, and one that didn't hold my interest much, as I didn't really "get it." I keep thinking I'd enjoy it a lot now, and have since purchased it on dvd. I just never got around to watching it again, which is shameful. It's definitely on my to-view list for the month, though!

Image source: Wikipedia

16 days till Halloween!

Since I'm all about Patrick Wilson right now, I'm going to include Insidious. I initially held off on seeing this because of the PG-13 rating, but my son went to see it in the theater and said he thought I would love it. Then come to find out it was written by Leigh Whannell (who also has a role in the movie) and directed by James Wan, the talent behind the Saw franchise? Well, that was all I needed to know and I was sold.

Despite it's PG-13 rating (or maybe because of it), it was actually quite scary at times. It didn't rely on gore or overt violence, but WAS tense, and made good use of score, loud noises, and suddenly-appearing creepy apparitions. And while I've said before that gore has its place, I do like being able to be scared without it.

17 days till Halloween!

The Children was one of my junior high "weekend video rentals" - my Mom always let me pick out a movie to go with some she and my stepdad picked out for us to watch over the weekend, and I always got really bad horror. It was more important to me to see something I hadn't already seen than it was to get something popular, better-known, and/or of better quality filmmaking - and I'm pretty sure these creepy kids were scarier than The Children Of The Corn kids!

And they had such edgy black fingernails....

Image source: Wikipedia

18 days till Halloween!

Long before Twilight, there was another family of hot vampires in a movie called The Lost Boys. Granted, this movie wasn't scary (but then again, neither is Twilight), but these hot vampires were evil and had fangs and couldn't walk in the sun. It also had plenty of humor and a bit of action to make up for its lack of scariness.

But the soundtrack? Oh my.

This is definitely one of my favorite movie soundtracks EVER. Everyone already knows about the amazing "Cry Little Sister," but there were some decent covers (Echo and The Bunnymen covered The Doors' "People Are Strange" and Roger Daltrey covered Elton John's "Don't Let The Sun Go Down On Me") and all around good stuff from INXS and Roger Waters.

I actually got to see this one in the theaters, and I loved it so much because it was the 80s and the vampires looked like they should have been in a hair band. And the 80s were all about the hair bands for me And speaking of bands and The Lost Boys....does anyone watch the HBO series Eastbound and Down? If so, you might have noticed Kenny Powers referencing the "sax player from The Lost Boys." This had both me and my sons laughing because my sons had seen this movie and knew exactly who he was talking about!

I still watch it whenever I happen to catch it on tv, even though I own the dvd. Watching the dvd just isn't the same as catching it unexpectedly.

Image source: Wikipedia