Saturday, October 31, 2009
Uncategorized 13 Days of Halloween: Which (obscure) scary movie to see?
Posted by Curt Holman @Curt_Holman on Sat, Oct 31, 2009 at 3:51 PM
Somehow I missed Drag Me to Hell when it played in theaters earlier this year, but I caught up with it last night. It's smart and nasty in all the right ways, while being totally icky -- it could just as easily had the title Don't Put Stuff in My Mouth. Director Sam Raimi seems to be having more fun plaguing Alison Lohman's loan officer than he did in all three Spider-man movies combined. This weekend it's playing at GSU's Cinefest if you'd rather see it on a big screen in a dark room for Halloween.
For scares at your local multiplex, you can still find ultra-violent Zombieland and the lo-fi sleeper hit Paranormal Activity (which outgrossed Saw VI last weekend). Two other lesser-known horror flicks have been highly touted, but I can't vouch for them (yet). Critics like the 80s-retro bloodfest The House of the Devil, which hasn't yet opened in Atlanta. A cult following surrounds the Halloween anthology flick Trick 'r Treat, which was long-shelved but has recently been released on DVD:
Nearly every horror film that's off-beat or extreme in some way has champions, even dreadful ones, so it's hard to separate the superior from the shlock. Here's a list of more chilling choices from the darker corners of the video store, as well as intriguing ones that I've been meaning to see.
Some of my frightful favorites include I Walked With a Zombie (1943), like a voodoo verson of Jane Eyre; The Last Wave (1977), which has one of the most haunting endings ever; The Company of Wolves (1984), a surreal meditation on Little Red Riding Hood and other fairy tales; Near Dark (1987), a vampire-Western from Hurt Locker director Kathryn Bigelow; Exorcist III (1990), an underrated follow-up with some heart-stopping shocks; "The Kingdom," Lars von Trier's miniseries that's like "ER" meets "Twin Peaks;" The Devil's Backbone (2001), Guillermo del Toro's ghost story set in the Spanish Civil War; and Gamera III: The Awakening of Irys (1999), one of best Japanese man-in-suit monster movies.
Meanwhile, here's a baker's dozen of recent and vintage lesser-known scary genre films that I've been stalking for a long time. Some of them might be lousy, but they all have interesting defenders or were spawned by promising filmmakers.
Audition (1999): Video dating goes horribly wrong in this corner-stone of Japan's recent horror resurgence from Takashi Miike.
Cemetery Man (1994): Italian horror-comedy starring Rupert Everett as a caretaker trying to keep the dead from rising out of their graves.
The Creeping Unknown (1955): Astronaut returns and begins to mutate in the first of England's "Quatermass" films about a professor who faces threats from outer space. (Another in the series, Five Million Years to Earth, is terrific.)
Dead of Night (1945): Renowned British anthology film that includes a chapter about -- eek! -- a sinister ventriloquist's dummy.
The Devil's Rejects (2005): Rob Zombie's depiction of a psycho family has loyal fans but even more detractors. Hmmm...
Dog Soldiers (2002): British Army soldiers take on werewolves in the Scottish highlands. Director Neil Marshall went on to make the superb The Descent and the guilty pleasure Doomsday.
Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1931): Fredric March is one of the view horror movie actors to win an Oscar. Generally regarded as the best adaptation of the Robert Louis Stevenson novel, and one of the few 1930s horror classics not from Universal Films.
Ginger Snaps (2000): Canadian horror film about two high school age sisters which uses lycanthropy as a metaphor for puberty. Perhaps Twilight fans should check it out.
Haute Tension (2003): Among France's recent entries in the horror genre include Alexandre Aja's account of college girls fending off a serial killer.
Purple Noon (1960): Before the Anthony Minghella/Matt Damon adaptation of The Talented Mr. Ripley came this version from director René Clément and actor Alain Delon.
Repulsion (1965): Acclaimed psychological thriller starring Catherine Deneuve was Roman Polanski's first film in English. (I've never seen The Tenant, either, but Rosemary's Baby is skin-crawling.)
Rogue (2007): I've heard no reviews whatsover about this Australian film about a giant crocodile, but it's from the director of the deeply disturbing Wolf Creek. And is about a giant crocodile.
Wendigo (2002): Snowbound supernatural suspense from Larry Fessenden, who directing the imperfect but intriguing The Last Winter and produced, among others, The House of the Devil.
Any of these I should defintely NOT watch? Any others that I should? Remember, we don't have to stop watching scary movies after Halloween.
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