LUCIDMEDIA

31 Days of Halloween

Written by Lucid Forge Staff Thursday, 01 October 2009 10:49

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31 Days of Halloween
October 5th - 10th
October 11th - 15th
October 16th - 20th
October 21st - 25th
October 26th - 31st
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To celebrate the “spook-tacular” month of October, the Lucid Forge staff is compiling a list of 31 movies – that’s one a day – to put you in the Halloween mood. Follow them daily or bank seven days’ worth to watch as a weekend marathon. Agree or disagree, whatever, you might have your own picks to enjoy. But whichever way you decide to celebrate the season, have a Happy Halloween.

October 1st – Repo The Genetic Opera [2008]
Written By Adam A. Donaldson

To get the “31 Days” rolling, I decided to do something a little more recent: Repo The Genetic Opera. Why? Well, it’s only a year old and already widely regarded as a cult classic, it’s a remarkable blend of rock opera theatrics and horror movie standards, and it’s probably the only film that could bring together Paul Sorvino, Sarah Brightman, Ogre from Skinny Puppy, Giles from Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Paris Hilton in the same movie. This remarkable casting alone makes Repo, directed by Saw II-IV overseer Darren Lynn Bossman, a can’t miss Halloween rental.

Based on a rock opera performed “Off-Broadway” in Los Angeles in the late 90s, Repo is the story of a future world where vital organ transplants save millions of lives from an epidemic, but the company providing them demands strict adherence to your payment schedule, because if you can’t, the Repo Man will come and collect those defaulted on organs. With a set-up like that, things are bound to get bloody disgusting pretty fast, and they do. As the lecherous Graverobber (co-writer and co-composer Terrance Zdunich) narrates through song, the Repo Man (Anthony Stewart Head) chases a young woman through back alleys to collect her ill-gotten heart.

Made on the (relative) cheap, Repo manages to be at once engaging and squirm inducing; humorous, but filled with pathos. It’s not unusual for in one scene to see Nathan (The Repo Man) lecture his daughter Shiloh (Alexa Vega from Spy Kids) about the dangers of leaving their home, and then in next to see Nathan retire to his “Repo Cave” where he uses a cadaver as a singing hand puppet. This brings me to the other key to Repo’s success: the music. The soundtrack is extremely singable, and I know several people that upon seeing the movie, went forth and downloaded the cast album off iTunes. Repo is a musical for those that hate musicals, and it’s infinitely rewarding in multiple viewings, never getting rusty or dull.

If you live in the Toronto area, the Bloor Cinema hosts monthly screenings of Repo The Genetic Opera with accompanying performance by Toronto’s Repo shadow players, The Shadow Cats. Their next date is October 28th.

October 2nd – Near Dark [1987]
Written By Barrett Hooper

Remember the 80s, back when vampires were only interested in tearing open your jugular and taking a sip and there was no such thing as fangbangers, vamp tramps or Twilight tweeners? Sure, there were the campy hairmetal bloodsuckers of The Lost Boys and the deliciously cheesy yuppie nosferatu of Fright Night, which are both great fun. But to all of them people were first and foremost meals.

The best of the bunch – in fact, one of the best vampire moves ever – is 1987’s Near Dark. The directorial debut of Kathryn Bigelow (Point Break, The Hurt Locker), it’s a Romeo and Juliet tragic love story told like a Sergio Leone western biker movie. That’s right folks, Bigelow beat Stephanie Meyer to the star-crossed human-vampire punch with this tale of a $#!t-kicking, skirt-chasing country boy, Caleb (Adrian Pasdar), who falls in love with a beguiling vampire beauty Mae (Jenny Wright) and becomes part of Mae’s family, played by regulars from Bigelow’s then-husband James Cameron’s films. There’s Lance Henriksen as vicious yet eerily calm vampire leader Jesse Hooker, Bill Paxton as his bloodthirsty crazy cowboy “offspring” Severen and Jenette Goldstein as the quasi-mother figure.

Like gypsies, they travel the dusty roads and dives of Middle America in a blacked-out Winnebago, doomed to exist in a perpetual bruised and blood-soaked twilight (ooh, like how I sneaked that in there?). To them, people are playthings, food to be toyed with and teased with before being consumed. And the introduction of Caleb into their tight-knit family starts to alter the dynamic in unpredictable ways.

Perhaps the biggest strength of the film is the world Bigelow and screenwriter Eric Red (the ultra-cool Rutger Hauer road movie from hell The Hitcher) have created, one in which the vampire mythology is stripped to its marrow-depleted bones. Gone are the hokey jokey gothic trappings, the stakes through the heart, garlic and holy water. These are nocturnal predators whose thirst for blood is like a heroin addiction. The word “vampire” is never used once in the film.

Like the vampire stories that have come since – notably the Twilight series and TV’s True Blood – Near Dark is at its weakest when its romance is exposed to daylight. It’s actually kind of silly in the way Romeo and Juliet stories often are. But when Bigelow keeps the story in the dark, where the clan can cut loose on unsuspecting humans, the result is bloody good fun.

October 3rd - The Mist [2007]
Written by Nadine Bachan

As a fan of Stephen King, I thought it quite appropriate that my first review details one the best adaptations of his work. While a lot this famous horror author’s recent books-to-films have been mediocre at best, director Frank Darabont seems to have a knack for bringing King’s characters and complex plots to life. He succeeded with both The Shawshank Redemption and The Green Mile, and he’s kept up an unblemished record with The Mist.

The story takes place in the small town of Bridgton, Maine. When the aftermath of a violently heavy thunderstorm seems to have blown a thick fog down from the mountains, the entire town is blanketed in a grey-out. Many are confused and scared, especially when rumours begin circulating of people been pulled into the mist. Several of the townspeople take refuge in a local supermarket, including commercial artist David Drayton (Thomas Jane) and his young son Billy, who had arrived only minutes before to buy supplies. While the barricaded walls of the grocery might help keep anything from getting in, they still aren’t safe – not in the least. David realizes that he will have to protect his son and his friends not only from the dangers that lurk in the mist, but also from the growing threats that soon begins to build among the people who have begun to react to their fears on the inside.

This is a film for anyone who appreciates suspense, character-driven plots, and a psychological study. Especially now, when we are constantly being urged to prepare for unexpected disasters, this movie forces us to ask ourselves: What am I willing to do to survive? The story delves deep into the possibilities of mass hysteria, fundamental ideas, and an urban form of cabin fever that has never before being explored in such an entertaining yet thought-provoking way. This is a rare find, especially for a mainstream horror film.

Thomas Jane and his co-stars Marcia Gay Harden, Laurie Holden, Toby Jones, Frances Sternhagen, and William Sadler (a Stephen King film regular) are all superb in their performances. We feel the tension, fear, and sense of doom right along with them. If you can get past the disappointments of CGI, you’re in for a treat. This film grips you from beginning to end, and leaves you with your jaw dropped. The Mist will give you chills down your spine and troubled thoughts for days.

October 4th – The Omen [1976]
Written By Nadine Bachan

Doesn’t the name Damien send shivers down your spine?

When Katherine Thorn suffers a miscarriage, her husband, American diplomat Robert Thorn, replaces their child with an orphan born that very same night to save her from grief. Together, they lovingly raise their son with the privileges and bright future of a diplomatic life. However, even at the age of five, Damien is clearly not a typical child. Robert soon notices the boy’s peculiar nature and the strange (often horrific) events that occur in Damien’s presence. It isn’t long before others perceive it too.

Mrs. Baylock, the Thorns’ new overtly-protective nanny, seems to share an unsettling bond with Damien. A frightened priest pursues Robert in order to reveal dire information about the child, and a zealous photographer, who now sees more than just images in the pictures he develops, seeks out Robert to offer assistance. Together, they must discover the secret of Damien’s true origins and what that means for the Thorns and the world as they know it … if certain deeds are not carried out.

Richard Donner’s The Omen stars an amazing cast. Gregory Peck plays the role of the diplomat father to a tee, appealing to a sense of strength, reason, and familial duty. David Warner’s portrayal of British photographer Keith Jennings encapsulates a brave vitality and a keen desire to find the truth. Above all others though, the sinister disposition of young Damien seems eerily natural to the then five-year-old actor Harvey Stephens. You’re immediately creeped out by the dead eyes of this child, and aren’t too upset when certain suggestions are offered regarding his fate.

The film is an enthralling mystery that draws you deep into the risqué themes of ritual murder, suicide, abortion, and more religious issues and taboos than you can count. The critical fact of the identity of Damien’s real mother is a sentence that remains frustratingly unfinished (but in a nicely suspenseful way) until nearly the end. That revelation and several other classic moments are enough to satisfy even today’s overly-desensitized audiences. To anyone who appreciates a good film death, I have three words for you: the decapitation scene.

To be perfectly clear, this review is in celebration of the 1976 film, not the unnecessary 2006 remake. I strongly believe that The Omen was done impeccably the first time around. My advice is simple: watch the original.

October 5th – The Old Dark House [1932]
Written By Andrew Skinner

Based on the J. B. Priestly novel Benighted is this odd little gem made just after Frankenstein (1931) by the same director, James Whale. It is strangely anticipatory or foreboding, it’s been noted, because the director seemed to be spooky house inventing whilst simultaneously spoofing it. English eccentricities and black humor lie throughout the dialogue disguised by the film’s age; it would be popular in Whale’s native England but not so much in America. He would go on to direct more formal horror classics like The Invisible Man (1933) and the Bride of Frankenstein (1935).

Philip Waverton (Raymond Massey), his wife Margaret (Gloria Stuart), and a care free war veteran named Roger Penderel (Melvyn Douglas) are stuck driving in a rain storm of mudslide proportions somewhere in Wales, forcing them to seek shelter for the night. Their cranky hosts are a scandalous pointy nosed man, Horace Femm (Ernest Thesiger) who claims to be on the run from the police, and his bitching hard of hearing sister Rebecca (Eva Moore), who rages at her heathen guests and family. There are no beds, the rooms upstairs are occupied by the 102 year old patriarch Sir Roderick Femm (female actor Elspeth Dudgeon billed as John Dudgeon), and further up the cavernous stairs, the guests learn by the fire, is another sibling prisoner named Saul (Brember Wills), who happens to be a psychotic pyromaniac. They are joined by two others stuck in the rain, Porterhouse (Charles Laughton) a self-made man, and his chorus line girlfriend Perkins (Lilian Bond).

Locked away in the kitchen if he gets at the gin is the looming screen presence of a bearded Boris Karloff, as the butler Morgan, which brings some psychological menace to the film but with out any real scares (This character is said to be the inspiration for a Charles Addams cartoon character; later Lurch the butler in “The Addams Family” TV show). It is all atmospheric candles and shadows. Rebecca, her face warped by a mirror, informs us that the lights are not dimming because of the storm; the lights always do that, “I’ll have none of that electric light, I won’t have it” is the humorous tone. The whistling storm is a substitute for music and it howls loudly when a door is opened.