Halloween Kills (2021)

🎃 Horrorthon 2021 #41

Finished off my Halloween franchise marathon this year with the current release.

I have to say: I'm not impressed with the direction they went on this one. Disappointing after the strong 2018 remake.

Watched on Peacock TV 👁️ Trailer on YouTube  

Halloween (2018)

🎃 Horrorthon 2021 #40

  Rewatching in preparation for Halloween Kills.

Watched on Bluray (library) 👁️ Trailer on YouTube  

The Howling (1981)

🎃 Horrorthon 2021 #39 🔥 40th Anniversary

Watched on DVD (owned) 👁️ Trailer on YouTube  

Silent Hill (2006)

🎃 Horrorthon 2021 #38

One of my personal faves. They did a great job bringing the feel of the video game to the screen, along with some of the most iconic and scary monster concepts ever in the horror genre.

Watched on DVD (owned) 👁️ Trailer on YouTube  

Dolls (1986)

🎃 Horrorthon 2021 #37 🔥 35th Anniversary

This was stoooooooooopid. It was composed like and played like an After School Special, complete with tinkling soundtrack. Its only saving grace was when the dolls attacked with tiny knives, axes, saws, guns, and pitchforks, and when the dolls were crunched there were gross, sticky little people skeletons inside.

Watched on Amazon Prime 👁️ Trailer on YouTube  

A Bucket of Blood (1959)

🎃 Horrorthon 2021 #36

Lonely, socially isolated, "simple" busboy, descends into murderous madness in a desperate attempt to earn acceptance within the local beatnik scene. B-movie GOLD. (and yes, that is Mr. Futterman from Gremlins)

Watched on DVD (owned) 👁️ Watch FREE on YouTube  

As Above, So Below (2014)

🎃 Horrorthon 2021 #35

Recommended on Amazon Prime "because you watched The Descent", so hell yeah I was interested.

Turned out to be pretty cool. Way more story-driven than it seems in the trailer, and the paranormal starts happening before you even realize it and takes you off guard. They worked-in the cave creeps well with the found-footage-style camera action. The "resolution" of their "hunt" was a bit trite, but the whole thing still ended satisfactorily (though predictable).

Watched on DVD (library) 👁️ Trailer on YouTube  

The Omen (1976)

🎃 Horrorthon 2021 #34 🔥 45th Anniversary

First time I've ever actually watched this all the way through. More like a pre-murder investigation/mystery than anything else, but now at least I've seen it.

Watched on DVD (library) 👁️ Watch FREE on YouTube  

The 8th Night (2021)

🎃 Horrorthon 2021 #33

This was really enjoyable, glad I decided to watch it. Lots of creeptastic happenings along a race to the end of the world.

Watched on Netflix 👁️ Trailer on YouTube  

Mom and Dad (2018)

🎃 Horrorthon 2021 #32

Love the crazy style and frenetic energy in this one! Great execution, sketchy ending but not detrimental.

Watched on Bluray (library) 👁️ Trailer on YouTube  

Brotherhood of the Wolf (2001)

🎃 Horrorthon 2021 #31 🔥 20th Anniversary

  This was thoroughly enjoyable.

Watched on Kanopy 👁️ Trailer on YouTube  

Mary (2019)

🎃 Horrorthon 2021 #30

  Love Gary Oldman, but this was just a barely spooky melodrama on a boat.

Watched on Hulu 👁️ Trailer on YouTube  

Stephen King's "Graveyard Shift" (1990)

🎃 Horrorthon 2021 #29

This was alright! Despicable factory foreman, menacing hoards of rats, great monster, giant pit of BONES 💀

Watched on DVD (owned) 👁️ Trailer on YouTube  

[ E Y E S ] by Savannah-Sunstone on DeviantArt

Prophecy (1979)

🎃 Horrorthon 2021 #28

This was a snooze-fest for the first 3/4.
The last 1/4 was not that great, either, just had actual monster in it.
...and I have no idea why this movie is called "Prophecy", that word has nothing to do with the content.🤷

Watched FREE on YouTube 👁️ Trailer on YouTube  

Slaughterhouse Rulez (2018)

🎃 Horrorthon 2021 #27

  Interesting concept, but not that great.

Watched on DVD (library) 👁️ Trailer on YouTube  

The Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning (2006)

🎃 Horrorthon 2021 #26

Very well done origin-story prequel to the 2003 remake -- grimy, gruesome, brutal and horrifying. I still can't believe R. Lee Ermey took this role, but he's fantastically terrifying.

Watched on DVD (owned) 👁️ Trailer on YouTube  

The Darkness (2016)

🎃 Horrorthon 2021 #25

  This movie gets a hard eyeroll.🙄👎

Watched on Netflix 👁️ Trailer on YouTube  

Doctor Blood's Coffin (1961)

🎃 Horrorthon 2021 #24 🔥 60th Anniversary

Classic "mad scientist" story, though it's filed in the "zombie" genre only because of the paralytic poison used by the doctor. The horror doesn't really happen 'til the last 15 minutes, when it ramps up to 100.

Watched on Amazon Prime 👁️ Trailer on YouTube  

Black Sheep (2007)

🎃 Horrorthon 2021 #23

This movie is absolutely BANANAS!  🐑 BAA. NAA. NUHS. 🍌🍌🍌🍌🍌

I first saw this movie via store rental, probably shortly after it was released on "home video", then for the longest time it seemed to have disappeared off the face of the earth, that I thought I imagined it. It's real, tho! Oh boy, is it real.

I would NOT recommend this to anyone who's not already a horror movie fan (this is not an "introduction to horror" film), but for any horror afficianado who hasen't seen this yet, you should absolutely put it on your list.

At time of this post, you can watch it "Free with Commercials" on Amazon Prime, but I just paid the 3 bucks to rent it because the ads are really intrusive.

Watched on Amazon (rental) 👁️ Trailer on YouTube  

Maximum Overdrive (1986)

🎃 Horrorthon 2021 #22 🔥 35th Anniversary

Stephen King did a damn good job directing this, with music by AC/DC (including score) -- still hits like a John Carpenter flick, IMHO, lol... must be the generation.😆

Watched on DVD (owned) 👁️ Trailer on YouTube  

Little Monsters (2019)

🎃 Horrorthon 2021 #21

Love Lupita Nyong'o ❤️ but this movie didn't quite live up to expectations. Some laughs, and watching Josh Gad cussing and being generally awful was entertaining in itself, but probably won't watch it again.

Watched on Hulu 👁️ Trailer on YouTube  

Fright Night (2011)

🎃 Horrorthon 2021 #20 🔥 10th Anniversary

So thru most of this movie, my brain was mistaking the original Night of the Demons as the original Fright Night 😂 that would explain some things... even so, this was just meh. I do not like Colin Farrell, but I knew that going into it.

Watched on DVD (library) 👁️ Trailer on YouTube  

Carrie (1976)

🎃 Horrorthon 2021 #19 🔥 45th Anniversary

  The camerawork is probably my favorite part of this film (and Sissy Spacek, of course).

Watched on Bluray (library) 👁️ Trailer on YouTube  

A Classic Horror Story (2021)

🎃 Horrorthon 2021 #18 🔥 Release Year

Ok, they got me! This was good.👍
The title means more than you think it means.
There is quite a bit of body-horror peppered throughout, so be prepared for that.

Watched on Netflix 👁️ Trailer on YouTube  

Season 3 of Netflix's The Movies That Made Us is now available!

It's got Halloween, Friday the 13th, Nightmare on Elm Street, and Alien episodes!

Scouts Guide to the Zombie Apocalypse (2015)

🎃 Horrorthon 2021 #17

  Passively enjoyable. Plenty of eye-rolls, but some good laughs in there, too.

Watched on DVD (library) 👁️ Trailer on YouTube  

It Follows (2014)

🎃 Horrorthon 2021 #16

  Well done original concept, but left me with more questions than answers!

Watched on DVD (library) 👁️ Trailer on YouTube  

Tonight's movie 😆🎃🔥

Willy's Wonderland (2021)

🎃 Horrorthon 2021 #15

This was something else.🤣

Nicolas Cage as the silent protagonist who drinks super-charged soda and battles animatronic mascots possessed by the spirits of child-murdering cultists...

✨and that's just the summary✨

A bunch of other weirdness happens, there's dumb kids and rednecks, creepy warbling children's music, just SO MUCH.

Watched on Hulu 👁️ Trailer on YouTube  

The Resort (2021)

🎃 Horrorthon 2021 #14

WHOOF this was beyond mediocre.

Not one single horror thing happened until after 45 mins of vamping and tortured banter. Then it was standard haunted-asylum-basement fare. The haunt story was barely explained, and the resident ghost didn't make any sense and was not compelling. There was a twist at the end, but it wasn't done well or worth watching the rest of the movie.
👎👎💩

Watched on Hulu 👁️ Trailer on YouTube  

His House (2020)

🎃 Horrorthon 2021 #13

  Atmospheric, haunting, SCARY and dripping with trauma.
  Good balance of story and horror.

Watched on Netflix 👁️ Trailer on YouTube  

Quarantine (2008)

🎃 Horrorthon 2021 #12

This movie is UNDER👏RATED👏

It's an English remake of a Spanish-language film (REC) that was released just 1 year earlier, and so Quarantine was kind of swept aside in the "found footage" craze of turn-of-the-century horror.

In the beginning, the acting can seem a bit stiff, but these are supposed to be "real people" so it's actually part of the gambit.
About 20 minutes-in the action starts to get frenetic and never stops, escalating until there's really never NOT something intensely frightening happening.

I've seen quite a few of the found-footage genre horror flicks, and none of them quite measure up to this one in intensity --- it just has that extra something special.

Watched on DVD (owned) 👁️ Trailer on YouTube  

There's Someone Inside Your House (2021)

🎃 Horrorthon 2021 #11

Spontaneously decided to watch this (it wasn't even on my list 😱) when it popped up on Netflix as I was searching for another movie. It was OK, as far as teen slashers go.

Watched on Netflix 👁️ Trailer on YouTube  

My Bloody Valentine (1981)

🎃 Horrorthon 2021 #10 🔥 40th Anniversary

  So very Canadian! and what a bizarre concept, but by-golly they went for it.

Watched on Hulu 👁️ Trailer on YouTube  

The Return of the Living Dead (1985)

🎃 Horrorthon 2021 #9

Love this iconic zombie flick! Great makeup and practical effects, great freakouts from the cast, and of course the "intelligent"(cognizant?) zombies that can speak and continually lay traps for unsuspecting victims.😂

Watched on HBO Max 👁️ Trailer on YouTube  

Halloween: Resurrection (2002)

🎃 Horrorthon 2021 #8

  I don't think I've actually seen this before.
  I don't think I'll ever watch it again, either. 💩

Watched on DVD (owned) 👁️ Trailer on YouTube  

Halloween H20: 20 Years Later (1998)

🎃 Horrorthon 2021 #7

I always liked this one. The Return of Jamie Lee Curtis!
Not the greatest version of Michael Myers, but they put in a lot of good jump scares, which (for me) makes up for it.

Watched on DVD (owned) 👁️ Trailer on YouTube  

Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers (1995)

🎃 Horrorthon 2021 #6

We have arrived in the 90's! Arguably the least popular film of the franchise, they went full-out occult conspiracy in this one.

But it wasn't that bad! There's honest-to-goodness Paul Rudd in here! This is also the point where they started to grunge-up Michael's mask (go figure), making his whole presence even more sinister.

This was one of Donald Pleasence's final films, and we were all so lucky to have had him involved throughout so much of the franchise.❤️

Watched on DVD (owned) 👁️ Trailer on YouTube  

Halloween 5: The Revenge of Michael Myers (1989)

🎃 Horrorthon 2021 #5

Dr. Loomis cracking up, and finally goes off the deep end in disturbing and catastrophic fashion.

...and in case u haven't guessed by now: Yes, I'm starting my Horrorthon off strong this year with a mini-marathon of the Halloween franchise, then the new one in theaters later in the month.

Watched on DVD (owned) 👁️ Trailer on YouTube  

Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers (1988)

🎃 Horrorthon 2021 #4

Back on track! Turns out: Michael and Loomis were NOT burned to death in a fiery explosion at the hospital back in 1978! 😱

This one's rough because he's after his little niece, and she's so messed up from it. Also, the kids at her school are dicks! and isn't that bad enough without your boogeyman uncle trying to kill you?! Gets me right in the feels.

Watched on DVD (owned) 👁️ Trailer on YouTube  

Halloween III: Season of the Witch (1982)

🎃 Horrorthon 2021 #3

Ah yes, the Halloween movie that actually has nothing to do with the Halloween franchise (at least how it continued after), and Michael Myers isn't even in it. Not sure what they were thinking with this one.✱

✱My horror-movie-friend informed me that they were attempting to make the Halloween franchise more of an anthology with this release -- not built around a central character, but standalone stories that occur on Halloween night. I had never heard that before, so I looked it up and that is indeed true! Apparently the plan did not go over well, audiences were confused, so they nixed the anthology series idea. (find out more: The Untold Truth of John Carpenter's Halloween)

Those masks are sweeeeeet, tho. Like, who doesn't want all three of those?!

Watched on DVD (owned) 👁️ Trailer on YouTube  

Halloween II (1981)

🎃 Horrorthon 2021 #2 🔥 40th Anniversary

I always liked how this one picked up the storyline immediately the same Halloween night as the first film. This sequel was not directed by John Carpenter, but manages to keep the tone of the original (Carpenter listed as producer).

Watched on DVD (owned) 👁️ Trailer on YouTube  

Malignant (2021)

🎃 Horrorthon 2021 #1

Well that was fkn weird.
Interesting concept, not what I expected from the previews. BUT, even I was able to figure out what was going on early in the movie, and that doesn't happen often.

Monster and backstory were plenty creepy and pretty well-executed, but some of the acting and action just didn't quite hit the mark for me. The opening sequence was disjointed-cheesy, and the ending was emotion-cheesy, and in-between... a crazy movie happens. 🤷 Not that I would say "don't bother watching" -- it was a unique film to experience, if nothing else.

Watched on HBO Max 👁️ Trailer on YouTube