Five Days of Double Features: Tourist Trap and Sleepaway Camp

Five Days of Double Features: Flesh for Frankenstein and Blood for Dracula

Click the above images above if you have Netflix Streaming. Otherwise, look elsewhere.

Five Days of Double Features: House by the Cemetery and The Beyond

For the next five consecutive days, we'll be offering five Halloween-friendly double features immediately available via online streaming.

By way of Hulu, let's start with a big kick to the consciousness: Lucio Fulci's two best films, House by the Cemetery and The Beyond. I'm listing them in that order (reverse chronology) because I think it's the best sequence to see them in a double feature paradigm; House by the Cemetery, while extremely scary, is a straightforward narrative. But The Beyond is a plunge into total madness, so your fatigue and exasperation will better serve the agenda of the film. Best to watch both of them late, preferably after midnight, as this is when your feeble mortal mind is at its most malleable. Read more about these two special films here.

Unless you subscribe to Hulu Plus, you'll have to sit through commercials. Also, they've decided for their own perverted reasons that The Beyond is rated X, so you have to create an account or sign in with Facebook. But they're HD transfers,  which are the only appropriate way to see Sergio Salvati's beauteous, Gothic cinematography, so well worth the hurdles.

(not embeddable; click posters to link)

Movie of the Week: Pumpkinhead (1988)

The Dario Argento Triple Feature

For some reason, all of Argento's best films are currently available on youtube, and they look to be high-quality transfers. Ideally, you'd be seeing a movie like Suspiria as a pristine 35mm strike from the original technicolor negative, in a theater with stereo sound cranked way up and an enthusiastic audience. But this is the 21st century, and people don't go out to the movies anymore. Youtube will have to suffice. Here are my three favorites, in diminishing order:

Inferno (1980)

Suspiria (1977)

Phenomena (1985)

You could expand this beyond a mere triple-feature if you wanted to; Deep Red, Tenebrae and Opera are also all on youtube in their original, uncut international versions. Everyone seems to like those. I suppose they're fine, but I was never a fan of his giallos. They don't speak to me the same way as these three surreal, maddening, insane horror films.

Bonus Feature: the 1985 documentary Dario Argento's World of Horror, an enlightening 70 minutes focusing largely on Phenomena (which I consider to be his last great movie). Some of the montages are too lengthy, making it drag in spots, but like Cronenberg, Argento makes for a good subject due to the insightful and articulate manner in which he's able to analyze his own work.

Related post: Zombi (Argento's Dawn of the Dead)

The Witch's Dungeon Is Now Showing

Somehow this has missed my radar my whole life, but it's been running for 47 years. Unfortunately, it's about as difficult to see as a lunar eclipse. You not only have to get yourself to Bristol CT, you also have to attend during their extremely limited hours; five days out of the whole year, all of them in October. You have this Friday and Saturday to get up there, and then Halloween day, then that's it.

I met the guy, or one of the guys, who runs it at last weekend's convention. Buy one of their DVD's and support the museum. More info here.

Futurechimp Theater: Food Will Win the War

Scraping the Bottom of the Barrel: Let's All Watch "Monsters" Now

It was only a matter of time before Monsters would show up here. I did the Amicus collection, then the Tales from the Dark Side and Night Gallery posts, then last week came one of the worst, Tales from the Crypt. But I'm a chump for horror anthology television, I guess, even when it's somewhat bad. I feel it necessary to explain that I watch this stuff while I'm doing other things, like sculpting. I'm a stay-at-home dad, I have lots of time for crappy television.

The budget of Monsters was very low. Most episodes were shot on a single set, no exteriors, with an average of three actors. But despite this, and the retarded opening sequence, and a theme song that sounded like it was played on a Casio, some of it isn't so bad. It's basically a continuation of Tales from the Darkside, since it's from the same producers, and it started when Tales stopped, in '89.  And like that show, it was independently produced to sell directly into syndication. Think of it as the TV equivalent of the crudely illustrated, lurid black+white horror comic magazines of the 70s. I just saw the show for the first time a couple weeks ago. I wasn't about to sit through all three seasons, though, so I skimmed the online reviews and checked a dozen or so of the top-rated episodes. Here are my four picks.

The Match Game




Leavings



Bug House



Jar

Movie of the Week: Android (1982)

This near-forgotten, small-but-substantial movie rates a tepid 5.8 on imdb.com (user reviews) but a solid 83% on rottentomatoes.com (critic reviews). To me, this indicates that most people who rent a movie called Android, produced by Roger Corman and allegedly starring Klaus Kinski and with no previous knowledge are probably going to be disappointed. This is not a drive-in action-horror like Creature, it's a philosophical drama that has haunted me since I saw it in the mid-80's.

Like several other Corman science fiction productions, this was filmed on leftover Battle Beyond the Stars sets in Venice, CA. The budget was a mere $500,000. But the limitations in resources are made up for with sensitivity to the material. This is a touching little film, and it's also fun, with a black comedic streak.

Here's what might interest me about it, and I don't even have to give away any plot, just the premise: Max the Android (credited simply as "himself" in the end titles, but actually a human co-writer of the screenplay) is sharing a remote space station with Klaus Kinski, who created him. But Max is an old model, so he's largely ignored while Kinski develops more technologically advanced androids. Max is left to fill the days on his own, assimilating Earth culture through old movies, living a life of isolation. This is an existential scenario: if your creator has forgotten you, then how do you give your own life meaning, especially when existing in a literal vacuum? How does one live a life after God?

But soon a crew of three with mysterious motives shows up on the station, including a female, the first Max has ever seen. Then the movie delves further in what it means to be human. Some smart and reflective people made this film, and it should be better known. On a related note, Corman decided it wasn't Corman-y enough, and sold the rights back to the filmmakers after completion. It sat around for two years before it was theatrically released in '84.

The actor/writer who plays Max is perfect as the center of the film, and the Maggie character is a charmer. This was the only real role of her career. She was a drummer in a all-girl band when the (first-time) director met her at a party, and he recommended her to audition. And if you're going to sit through this just because you're a Klaus Kinski admirer, be advised that you'll be seeing him for about 10 cumulative minutes.

Movie of the Week: The Pit (1981)

More like movie of the year. Did I say year? Nay, Movie of the 20th Century. Ah, Pit, where have you been all my life? I only discovered you a few weeks ago, but it seems like we've been together forever.

This 1981 aberration is a Canadian production shot in Beaver Dam, Wisconsin, and as you'll often find with Canadian horror, it sustains a surreal and uncomfortable-yet-irresistible vibe throughout. The whole movie is from the perspective of little Sammy, who looks like an average 12-year old boy, but has the voice of a 50-year old alcoholic midget. Plus he likes to play sadistic psychosexual games with grown women. He talks to his teddy bear, but it's not so weird, because the bear talks back (and, in a sequence that I find to be very scary for its sheer oddity, it also moves when the kid isn't around). Plus there's the titular pit, which Sammy uses to dispose of people he doesn't like. Plus there are troglodytes (whom the kid affectionately refers to as "Tra-la-logs") living in the pit, eating anyone who is pushed in. Plus a lot of other things happen.

Call it a conflation of The Bad Seed, Private Lessons, Child's Play and C.H.U.D. In other words, call it the best movie you've probably never heard of before. You're welcome.

(a minor note: my one complaint with this superlative work of cinema is the first three minutes, a flash-forward that is entirely replayed later anyway. I recommend skipping ahead to the title at 3:07. And the teacher in the opening scene is Bianca O'Blivion, from Cronenberg's Videodrome).