This Month in Horror: On Line

I've given you theatrical recommendations, I've given you television recommendations, what else do you want? Oh I get it. You're a hip now sort of guy or gal, you twitter and update your Facebook status at each bowel movement. So you gave away your television and can't stand to be away from instant messaging long enough to go to a theatre, huh? Well, you are in luck, some websites have streaming full length films, and some of those films just happen to be of the horror variety.

Personally, I've only ever tried out Netflix's Watch it Now and Hulu, both are pretty reliable, though not without their flaws. Netflix tends to pause to buffer from time to time and Hulu has frequent commercial interruption, but both show films uncut, which is more than you can say for basic cable. Here are ten recommendations for each site.

Netflix (you need to be a member to access the Watch It Now function)

Black Christmas (1974, Bob Clark): I've written about this film before, it's one of my all-time favorite horror movies, and was the template for many of the holiday themed slasher films that followed, though with better developed character, deeper resonance and better atmosphere than most of its followers.

Carrie (1976, Brian DePalma): Just watched this again for the first time in years, and wow, what a film, up there with The Shining for the best Stephen King film adaptation. Simultaneously a wicked black comedic satire, revenge fantasy and honest depiction of the cruelty of high school and sexual discovery.

Combat Shock (1986, Buddy Giovinazzo): If like me you missed The Cinefamily presentation, you can still catch this notorious grimy cult favorite on line.

The Evil Dead (1981, Sam Raimi): The ultra low budget film that started Sam Raimi's career and the Ash trilogy is still a blast of gory fun.


Let the Right One In (2008, Tomas Alfredson): The only vampire film to stand out amongst the barrage of recent bloodsucking deluge is this soulful poetic Swedish film, see it before the American remake. Lina Leandersson deserved recognition for giving the best performance of last year.

Patrick (1978, Richard Franklin): This Australian shocker from Alfred Hitchcock protege Franklin was featured prominently in the Ozsploitation documentary Not Quite Hollywood.

Phantasm (1979, Don Coscarelli): One of the few 1970's horror films not to be remade. Ice Cream Trucks, Tall Men and Metal Balls, oh my!

Twilight Zone: The Movie (1983, John Landis, Stephen Spielberg, Joe Dante and George Miller): After the introductory segment with Dan Aykroyd and Albert Brooks feel free to skip past the infamous Landis section and the maudlin and bored Spielberg section to Dante's technicolor nightmare of a world where a nine year old boy gets everything he wants which is followed by Miller's remake of the infamous "Nightmare at 20,000 Feet" episode, with John Lithgow in William Shatner's role of a paranoid flier.

Vampyr (1932, Carl Theodor Dreyer): The silent German Expressionist classic.

Zombie (1980, Lucio Fulci): I will be honest, I am not the biggest fan of Fulci's gory ostensible, sequel to George A. Romero's Dawn of the Dead, but if you've never seen the shark versus the zombie scene, get thee there now!

Hulu


Black Sunday (1960, Mario Bava)
Black Sabbath (1963, Mario Bava)

Two by Italian maestro Bava, the first an atmospheric black and white tale of witchcraft, the second a brightly colorful triptych of horror tales hosted by Boris Karloff.

The Blob (1988, Chuck Russell)
Dawn of the Dead (2004, Zack Snyder)

Two remakes that prove reduxes don't all have to resucks (heh!). The Blob improves the original's cheap special effects. And while Snyder's take on Romero's classic is nowhere near an improvement, it's an interesting modern revision with solid acting and a good sense of dread. All political subtext though is removed and I despise the final five minutes.

A Bucket of Blood (1959, Roger Corman)

Dick Miller gives a tour de force as the nervous waiter and wannabe beatnik who turns into an overnight sensation in the art world after he plasters a dead cat. A wicked satire.


Do You Like Hitchcock? (2005, Dario Argento)

I do like Hitchcock as a matter of fact, and generally, Argento too, although his recent work is a little dicey, but this got pretty good word of mouth.

Horror Express (1972, Eugenio Martin)

The missing link is loose on a passenger train and only Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing can stop it. Joe Dante played this at his first New Beverly programming residency.

Last Man on Earth (1964, Ubaldo Rogano)

Before Charlton Heston or Will Smith tried to survive a vampire apocalypse, Vincent Price starred in the first film adaptation of Richard Matheson's I Am Legend.

Night of the Living Dead (1968, George A. Romero)

The original zombie classic.

Troll 2 (1990, Claudio Fragasso)

And finally if you are feeling really brave, you can watch what is affectionately considered to be (even by it's cast and crew) the worst movie of all time.

If anyone has any legal online viewing sites they recommend, please pass them along in the comment section.

Scary Songs: "Somebody's Watching Me"

Originally I had bookmarked this day to dedicate a post to the horror film themes of Ennio Morricone in celebration of attending his first concert ever in Los Angeles at the Hollywood Bowl tpmorrow. Then three days before it was to take place, the show was cancelled. And well, I am too depressed to go forward with the Morricone post.

In his place, let's set our time machine to 1984 when Rockwell with the help of his dad, Motown founder Berry Gordy, the label that released the record, and close friend Michael Jackson, whose Thriller was setting the charts ablaze at the time and who lends his buddy back vocals here had a big hit and heavy MTV rotation with this paranoid pop song.

Quick Reviews: The Stephen King "-er" Edition

When I planned to devote a week of Horror Month to Stephen King, the first author whose work I rabidly followed, back in my early teen years, it occurred to me that I should finally visit some of my King adapted cinematic blind spots. While 2001's Hearts in Atlantis and 1996's Thinner remain unwatched, I finally visited Firestarter and Dreamcatcher, unfortunately (or for the readers, fortunately perhaps) I don't have much to say about either, so I will combine some quick thoughts of both into this one post.

Firestarter (1984, Mark L. Lester)

Like the recently discussed Silver Bullet (and from the same producer, Dino DeLaurentiis) Firestarter goes with an anonymous director who provides the feature with the visual flatness of a made-for-TV movie of the era. I want to emphasize I have a special place in my heart for some workmanlike directors and don't require that every director be a formalist of the Kubrick, DePalma or Tarantino caliber, but film is a visual medium and both this and Bullet are inert in that respect, which is something I cannot abide. Having never read the novel that inspired the film, I cannot speak on the major structure or plotting flaws being the film's sole faults or that of the source, but after Act I featuring David Keith and Drew Barrymore running from a shadowy government entity concludes with them being taken captive and separated, the lion's share of the film has the duo apart despite the mental pyrokinetec powers of both seemingly make reconcilication an easy task. The film, like Silver Bullet, does feature a great "final conflict" scene towards the conclusion when Drew finally lets her firestarting skills go nuts. Although much of the power and ambiguity is subsequently whitewashed away in the final scenes that provide a pat happy ending for the little girl. While only his eighth novel, it seems King was already recycling elements from previous works, most notably the lead characters and her similarities to Carrie White's otherworldly power, though lacking the parallels to sexual identity or much of any subtext.

Dreamcatcher (2003, Lawrence Kasdan)

I have never been the type of person to make hyperbolic statements like many of the trolls who lurk on IMDB. I realize very few movies are THE GREATEST MOVIE EVER and just because a film doesn't work doesn't make it THE BIGGEST PIECE OF SHIT EVER MADE. So when I say Dreamcatcher is one of the worst films I have ever seen, please take it as a sincere statement. Concerning another recycled King trope of reunited friends that face a monster related to their past (a la IT), Dreamcatcher's main villian is a piece of shit gone bad. Seriously. I will be completely forthright and say I had trouble staying awake during the film and after awhile gave up the act of rewinding to see what I miss, but what I did see was a film that is just never gels and meanders from frame one, Kasdan and co-screenwriter, the Academy Award winning William Goldman, never grasped how to handle the material, nothing works or resembles anything like a real world or emotion. The film again shows the folly of paying reverence to King's written word, with key scenes that visually depict a character's mind as an actual locker of memories. Again I have to admit to not reading Dreamcatcher, but I have read a lot of King stories so I am willing to bet high stakes this was a component of it. On film, it's flat, and while that would be forgivable if it was a throwaway scene, Kasdan keeps returning to it and it plays a pivotal role in the film's conclusion. Kubrick realized this with the topiary garden gone nuts in The Shining and appropriately altered the film's conclusion. Kasdan is too middle of the road to make the film, long playing fart scenes and feces monster and all, bad enough to actually be entertaining nor is he talented or unique enough to combine whatever threads made Dreamcatcher a best seller with an idiosyncratic or personal vision. The result is a crashing, and punishing 2 hour plus bore.

In conclusion, based on these two films and The Mangler and The Lawnmower Man (which King took his name off of), I'd recommend staying far away from Stephen King adaptations with titles featuring words ending in "-er", I haven't seen either The Tommyknockers or The Langoliers, so perhaps television provides better results for these grammatically similar films. Again, haven't seen Thinner, but based on it's reputation, I doubt that will swing the pendulum.

24 Frames: Carrie

Carrie (1976, directed by Brian DePalma, cinematography by Mario Tosi)

Stephen King Is Going to Scare the Hell Out of You

Remember back on October 1st when I posted the trailer for Psycho and remarked that you would never see a trailer that sells the movie primarily on the pull of the director's fame? Well, I was wrong, because in 1986, first, and only, time director Stephen King introduces the trailer for Maximum Overdrive and after some kvetching over not having his work done right by other directors promises to scare the hell out of you, and that's a guarantee. If the hell is in fact scared out of you by Maximum Overdrive, and let me preface this by saying I hate to make assumptions about other people, you are a big ol' wuss.

Here's the trailer for Maximum Overdrive it's adorably goofy, much like the film. If the trailer's soundtrack sounds familiar, it's because it recycles the Alan Howarth/John Carpenter score from Halloween III: Season of the Witch.



And in case you have never seen Maximum Overdrive, the vending machine wrath scene, the highlight of this guilty pleasure, is included below to whet your appetite.



I apologize if this resulted in the hell being scared out of you.

Silver Bullet (1985, Daniel Attias)

Originally conceived as a collaboration on a calendar between writer Stephen King and artist Bernie Wrightson, Cycle of the Werewolf ballooned to a novella when, in a not so surprising twist, the typically verbose King got elephantitis of the prose kind. Split into twelve chapters, one for each month of the year, the conceit was easy and genius, a year long werewolf attack in the small (fictional) town of Tarker's Mill, each chapter devoted to one day of the annual lunar calendar.

Reading Cycle, I was surprised anyone would see film potential, well other than the popular and timeless werewolf genre and King's name, in the project. There are only a handful of recurring characters most of who aren't introduced until the April chapter and it's only 130 pages long, with about forty percent of that count being comprised of illustrations. But hey, it was the mid-80's, where anything King wrote had it's film rights instantly sold, or have you forgotten Don't Forget the Milk: The Grocery List...of Death!? And the adaptation's producer Dino DeLaurentiis was never one to allow quality to get in the way of his products. The film that would eventually result does not rely on the novella's episodic nature and focuses early and often on the family that becomes the focus in the last few chapters of the novella with a few of the "kills" from the source material incorporated.

Silver Bullet (the film was renamed to focus on a combination of Corey Haim's character's wheelchair, the sole method of disposing of the lycanthrope afflicted and possibly a Coors light cross promotion) director Daniel Attias does not put the personal stamp on King's material that your, say, Brian DePalmas, Stanley Kubricks, John Carpenters, or David Cronenbergs had earlier, which would be okay, I guess, if the material was more interesting. However, what's more, he's painfully inept at creating any sense of atmosphere or suspense save for the final climactic scene which is surprisingly tense and the most well executed portion of the entire film. His weakness is most apparent in a major plot point in Act II that drives the rest of the movie: the werewolf's fist attack on Corey Haim's character Marty Coslaw. Attias depends heavily on cliché slasher film tropes such as the "killer watching in the distance" and subjective POV shots. Most criminally, he never actually places Marty and the werewolf ever in the same frame at any point of the entire scene, robbing the film of a crucial threat. Maybe this was due to child labor laws keeping the underage Haim from participating in night shoots, but c'mon, ever hear of shooting day for night or on a set where you can manipulate lighting? Attias' other crutch is to pay tribute to the other dominant Steve of 1980's popular entertainment, Spielberg, by creating scenes that in many cases beat for beat recall the noted director's past work, including Tarker Mill's town hall meeting turning into an angry mob scene a la Jaws (the film's also has a pivotal Fourth of July event cancelled) and a murder set piece that borrows heavily it's visual palette from Elliott's discovery of E.T.

Attias may lack much panache, but he's assisted in mediocrity by the screenplay, adapted by King himself (his first feature length screenplay) who adds such dubious new details like making the film a period piece set in 1976, though other than an inter-title, no reference to the year is ever made, not even when the fireworks show on Independence Day is cancelled on what would be the country's bicentennial, and most egregiously, a voice-over that had me twitching to buy that Robert McKee book just so I can throw it at the screen. Serving no purpose other than a beta test for the nostalgic VO that would be utilized in later King adaptation, such as the year later production Stand by Me, the voice-over is tonally presented in the exact patois of someone wistfully recalling their first kiss "I can still remember the first time I was attacked by a werewolf, the lilies were in full blossom etc."

King also restructures the narrative utilized in the novella, obliterating the monthly lunar cycle framing (which he already admits to fudging for dramatic purposes in the novella's preface) and ups the number of kills despite the film's span being reduced to between summer and Halloween. King presents the film as a mystery, thus removing the sympathizing with the afflicted werewolf aspect, a layer not forgotten in the source material, especially unfortunate given the profession of the afflicted person (I won't spoil in case you have interest in this 22 year old film) and the serious moral struggles which he or she should have, all of which is sidestepped to focus on the Coslaw kids and their relationship with their man-child uncle (played by Gary Busey at his most Gary Buseyiest).

Speaking of the kid centric focus of the film both plot wise and cinematically, Silver Bullet was rated R but seems aimed at a much younger demographic. A lot of time is spent on typical childish behavior that's rote to anyone over voting age or the wow factor of Haim's supped up wheelchair, yet some of the murder scenes have over the top gore and decapitations. The film teeters on the edge of being too intense for most children but a bore for the horror crowd. Ironically, Paramount had more success later in the same year, 1985, with the PG-13 rated werewolf comedy Teen Wolf.

When all is said and done what the failure of Silver Bullet reveals most is that King became a victim of his own success. He was notably, and still to this day is, upset at changes that Kubrick made to The Shining novel, not realizing that adaptation does not always equal a page for page reproduction. By the point King became the biggest selling author in the world, he had more power over his production and the result was films churned out by less visionary directors than those between the years of 1976-83, including humorously enough, King himself. Of course those very film adaptations by interesting directors are just as responsible for King's success as his writings.

Trailer of the Moment: The Shining

This simple yet effective trailer for Stanley Kubrick's adaptation of Stephen King's The Shining is itself a piece of avant garde cinema. Can you imagine a film today with a star of Jack Nicholson's fame circa 1980 not even showing any scenes of the actor at work?



Then I see this alternate version of the trailer and I get the warm fuzzies.



Makes you wish Kubrick figured away to get Peter Gaberial's "Solsbury Hill" on the soundtrack doesn't it?

Posterized: Stephen King on Film

Carrie (1976, Brian DePalma)

Salem's Lot (1979, Tobe Hooper)

The Shining (1980, Stanley Kubrick)

Creepshow (1982, George A. Romero)

Cujo (1983, Lewis Teague)




The Dead Zone (1983, David Cronenberg)

Christine (1983, John Carpenter)

Children of the Corn (1984, Fritz Kiersch)

Firestarter (1984, Mark L. Lester) Cat's Eye (1985, Lewis Teague)

Silver Bullet (1985, Daniel Attias)

Maximum Overdrive (1986, Stephen King)

Stand by Me (1986, Rob Reiner)




Creepshow 2 (1987, Michael Gornick)

The Running Man (1987, Paul Michael Glaser (Starsky!))

Pet Sematary (1989, Mary Lambert)

Tales From the Darkside: The Movie (1990, John Harrison)

Graveyard Shift (1990, Ralph S. Singleton)

Misery (1990, Rob Reiner)




Sleepwalkers (1992, Mick Garris)





The Dark Half (1993, George A. Romero)


Needful Things (1993, Fraser Clarke Heston)

The Shawshank Redemption (1994, Frank Darabont)

The Mangler (1995, Robert Englund)

Dolores Claiborne (1995, Taylor Hackford)




Thinner (1996, Tom Holland)


Apt Pupil (1998, Bryan Singer)



The Green Mile (1999, Frank Darabont)

Hearts in Atlantis (2001, Scott Hicks)

Dreamcatcher (2003, Lawrence Kasden)

Secret Window (2004, David Koepp)

1408 (2007, Mikael Hafstrom)

The Mist (2007, Frank Darabont)