A little to start.
Today I am going to use my journal to its fullest extent, that is to say I'm going to bitch about my petty little problems for my own rapt audience (namely me). E left today for a job in LA (the state, not the city) and I am a big old sucker when you get right down to it. That, coupled with the fact that due to his absence I have to vacate our big old expensive apartment, makes me a big old emotional mess. I've been trying to keep myself busy all day, looking at overpriced studio apartments and getting anxious, packing my way way way too many books and toys (8 boxes so far and I have a month and my video game and DVD collections still to go), and breaking down crying every couple of hours feeling like a girl and missing him. I know it will probably get better in a couple of days but I just wanted to bitch.
Anyway. In October jladam does a great horror marathon, a tradition I've joined in as well. I promised him I'd post my selections too but I think you all know me and my habits by now. I figured I'd at least get a start at it, since I wasted a lot of time getting the screen caps and hopefully it will provide you some workday amusement. I shouldn't have to say this, but this is so picture heavy it might make your computer's spleen asplode. You've been warned. Without further ado.
The film starts with a dark and stormy night, as they often do, and the brutal slaying of innocents by someone they trust and hold dear, as they often do. The whole scene is a pretty shocking way to start the movie, but the segment ends with this shot ...
An entire family (ma, pa, little brothers and sister, and murderer-turned-suicidal older brother) as seen from the back of a hearse, with the rain and police hubbub continuing outside but muffled by the windows of the car. It's very effective, and it lingers for almost too long before it fades to black and the rest of the movie starts.
Obviously these people don't watch horror movies, or else they would know to never trust a house with a bright red door. Coincidentally, the Nightmare on Elm Street House is not far from where I live, and the newest owners have painted the door bright red like it is in the films (but not the first, in which it is bright blue) and I just think that's wicked awesome.
A priest and lifelong friend of the devoutly Catholic wife Kathy comes to bless the house while the family is out. The strange happenings that have been plaguing the family begin to turn on the unsuspecting priest, and he is stricken with the kind of unaccountable deaf-and-dumbness coupled with preternatural insects that can only be attributed to vengeful ghosts.
A psychic friend picks up on the same creepy vibes as the family dog and helps direct them to a hidden room underneath the stairway. She channels the evil energy there and speaks to the family in a voice totally unbecoming of the actress who was Littlefoot's mom.
Long story short, pretty much everyone associated with the house goes effing bonkers or has constant brushes with death. In the case of the priest, it's both, as he imagines his church falling in around him. After his hallucinatory fit he is rendered blind and mute, and the poor fambly is left to fend for itself.
And then this happens! No not really, but the mother experiences psychic dreams about the murders in the house and sees history repeating itself in her nightmares. You have no idea how many times it took to get this screenshot at exactly the right moment.
Nun shootin' hoops. 'Nuff said.
This movie was effectively terrifying until they revealed that the "imaginary friend" the young daughter had been speaking to all this time was ... a giant demonic glowing pig?
I'm not sure what's going on with her skin in this photo but it creeps me right the fuck out. It reminds me of the scene at the end of Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1978) where her skin begins to shrivel and turn inside out as her pod person takes form. But this lady has no excuse.
This is a Clive Barker tale without the originality or sparseness of Hellraiser, and even though a lot of people give it flak it's a consistent popcorn-and-licorice horror movie in my book. Plenty of what's real, what isn't, supernatural versus reality, which plays on an issue at the heart of the movie, a thesis on the origin of urban legends and how they spring up in their different incarnations. And I love me a good urban legend tale.
Personally I learned the Bloody Mary myth, but Candyman goes vaguely the same way - say his name seven times in a mirror and he'll come for you. He's shown here taking a victim, who was a friend's roommate's boyfriend's sister. At first our heroine is skeptical of superstitions, as any grad school thesis-writing intellectual would be, and seeks to find the inspiration behind the Candyman legend. One famous Candyman murder occurred in a housing project nearby, so she goes to investigate (with a black friend in tow, for street cred).
At the scene of the murder she finds razorblades shoved into candies, which I suppose is Candyman's calling card even though it's the one and only time we see them. But whatever, it adds dramatic effect and makes you think you've got it all figured out when some thug in the area is busted for Candyman's crimes - he was obviously one of those creeps who gives razorblade candy to kids on Halloween. But then ...
The grad student awakes to find she's done this. She has blacked out and can't remember decapitating a dog, assaulting a woman, or where she put that woman's baby. She's convinced Candyman is actually behind it all but the rest of the rational world sees a woman obsessively losing her grip.
This doesn't help. How will she ever get street cred now?
While she's locked away, she has a very clear vision of Candyman and is introduced to a really lame subplot about the TRUE nature of Candyman. In pre-Civil War Chicago, he was an educated black painter who knocked up a young debutante and was messily murdered by an angry mob. Now he's here to claim a new love, because she looks just like his old love, or because it will make them immortal through legend? I don't know.
I twitch after watching this scene.
Through a complicated series of events that would be more believable in a better movie, our unfortunate heroine ends up dead but redeemed, and granted that elusive immortality by living on in her own incredibly lame urban legend.
Whosoever sayeth 'Helen' seven times into a mirror will be visited by the chemo patient from Heck.
This is a Halloween movie like Gremlins is a Christmas movie, in setting only and not in spirit or theme. Still, I wouldn't pass up an opportunity to look at this ...
Like I obsess when I can't figure out what movie a sample in a song is from, I drove myself nuts trying to figure out what the word on the wall meant. Finally I just Googled it and apparently Tamisra is some goffy band from the early '90s. Shout out to Tamisra!
Mostly I just took this so I could get my head around this shot. It's cut to suddenly from a different, much more recognizable perspective, and the effect is very cool. It occurs in conjunction with his flashbacks of falling out the window to his death, only this time he learns he is invincible.
There's no way they could afford that amazing loft.
So he's murderously insane, but there's something oddly endearing about his dripping drool.
Probably the most merciful of all the deaths, though in the movie Funboy is comic relief and in the graphic novel he's the only one who finds any kind of equilibrium.
It's sad that Bai Ling has gone on to do mostly Z-list actors and not any more screen rolls as incestual witches. She was also a cook of aborted baby dumplings in one of my fantastic Jap horror movies, which I'll include if I can find. The irony here is she taught her brother "all the power in the world resides in the eyes." Get it?
Top Dollar is an awesome bad guy, and he gets an awesome sendoff. It's a fairly quick pan-over in the movie but this shot captures his death in all its gargoyle-impaled, blood-spewing goodness.
And then sweetness, beauty, an ending that always brings tears to my eyes. Buildings burn, people die, but real love is forever.
More tomorrow if I feel like it.
Anyway. In October jladam does a great horror marathon, a tradition I've joined in as well. I promised him I'd post my selections too but I think you all know me and my habits by now. I figured I'd at least get a start at it, since I wasted a lot of time getting the screen caps and hopefully it will provide you some workday amusement. I shouldn't have to say this, but this is so picture heavy it might make your computer's spleen asplode. You've been warned. Without further ado.
The film starts with a dark and stormy night, as they often do, and the brutal slaying of innocents by someone they trust and hold dear, as they often do. The whole scene is a pretty shocking way to start the movie, but the segment ends with this shot ...
An entire family (ma, pa, little brothers and sister, and murderer-turned-suicidal older brother) as seen from the back of a hearse, with the rain and police hubbub continuing outside but muffled by the windows of the car. It's very effective, and it lingers for almost too long before it fades to black and the rest of the movie starts.
Obviously these people don't watch horror movies, or else they would know to never trust a house with a bright red door. Coincidentally, the Nightmare on Elm Street House is not far from where I live, and the newest owners have painted the door bright red like it is in the films (but not the first, in which it is bright blue) and I just think that's wicked awesome.
A priest and lifelong friend of the devoutly Catholic wife Kathy comes to bless the house while the family is out. The strange happenings that have been plaguing the family begin to turn on the unsuspecting priest, and he is stricken with the kind of unaccountable deaf-and-dumbness coupled with preternatural insects that can only be attributed to vengeful ghosts.
A psychic friend picks up on the same creepy vibes as the family dog and helps direct them to a hidden room underneath the stairway. She channels the evil energy there and speaks to the family in a voice totally unbecoming of the actress who was Littlefoot's mom.
Long story short, pretty much everyone associated with the house goes effing bonkers or has constant brushes with death. In the case of the priest, it's both, as he imagines his church falling in around him. After his hallucinatory fit he is rendered blind and mute, and the poor fambly is left to fend for itself.
And then this happens! No not really, but the mother experiences psychic dreams about the murders in the house and sees history repeating itself in her nightmares. You have no idea how many times it took to get this screenshot at exactly the right moment.
Nun shootin' hoops. 'Nuff said.
This movie was effectively terrifying until they revealed that the "imaginary friend" the young daughter had been speaking to all this time was ... a giant demonic glowing pig?
I'm not sure what's going on with her skin in this photo but it creeps me right the fuck out. It reminds me of the scene at the end of Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1978) where her skin begins to shrivel and turn inside out as her pod person takes form. But this lady has no excuse.
This is a Clive Barker tale without the originality or sparseness of Hellraiser, and even though a lot of people give it flak it's a consistent popcorn-and-licorice horror movie in my book. Plenty of what's real, what isn't, supernatural versus reality, which plays on an issue at the heart of the movie, a thesis on the origin of urban legends and how they spring up in their different incarnations. And I love me a good urban legend tale.
Personally I learned the Bloody Mary myth, but Candyman goes vaguely the same way - say his name seven times in a mirror and he'll come for you. He's shown here taking a victim, who was a friend's roommate's boyfriend's sister. At first our heroine is skeptical of superstitions, as any grad school thesis-writing intellectual would be, and seeks to find the inspiration behind the Candyman legend. One famous Candyman murder occurred in a housing project nearby, so she goes to investigate (with a black friend in tow, for street cred).
At the scene of the murder she finds razorblades shoved into candies, which I suppose is Candyman's calling card even though it's the one and only time we see them. But whatever, it adds dramatic effect and makes you think you've got it all figured out when some thug in the area is busted for Candyman's crimes - he was obviously one of those creeps who gives razorblade candy to kids on Halloween. But then ...
The grad student awakes to find she's done this. She has blacked out and can't remember decapitating a dog, assaulting a woman, or where she put that woman's baby. She's convinced Candyman is actually behind it all but the rest of the rational world sees a woman obsessively losing her grip.
This doesn't help. How will she ever get street cred now?
While she's locked away, she has a very clear vision of Candyman and is introduced to a really lame subplot about the TRUE nature of Candyman. In pre-Civil War Chicago, he was an educated black painter who knocked up a young debutante and was messily murdered by an angry mob. Now he's here to claim a new love, because she looks just like his old love, or because it will make them immortal through legend? I don't know.
I twitch after watching this scene.
Through a complicated series of events that would be more believable in a better movie, our unfortunate heroine ends up dead but redeemed, and granted that elusive immortality by living on in her own incredibly lame urban legend.
Whosoever sayeth 'Helen' seven times into a mirror will be visited by the chemo patient from Heck.
This is a Halloween movie like Gremlins is a Christmas movie, in setting only and not in spirit or theme. Still, I wouldn't pass up an opportunity to look at this ...
Like I obsess when I can't figure out what movie a sample in a song is from, I drove myself nuts trying to figure out what the word on the wall meant. Finally I just Googled it and apparently Tamisra is some goffy band from the early '90s. Shout out to Tamisra!
Mostly I just took this so I could get my head around this shot. It's cut to suddenly from a different, much more recognizable perspective, and the effect is very cool. It occurs in conjunction with his flashbacks of falling out the window to his death, only this time he learns he is invincible.
There's no way they could afford that amazing loft.
So he's murderously insane, but there's something oddly endearing about his dripping drool.
Probably the most merciful of all the deaths, though in the movie Funboy is comic relief and in the graphic novel he's the only one who finds any kind of equilibrium.
It's sad that Bai Ling has gone on to do mostly Z-list actors and not any more screen rolls as incestual witches. She was also a cook of aborted baby dumplings in one of my fantastic Jap horror movies, which I'll include if I can find. The irony here is she taught her brother "all the power in the world resides in the eyes." Get it?
Top Dollar is an awesome bad guy, and he gets an awesome sendoff. It's a fairly quick pan-over in the movie but this shot captures his death in all its gargoyle-impaled, blood-spewing goodness.
And then sweetness, beauty, an ending that always brings tears to my eyes. Buildings burn, people die, but real love is forever.
More tomorrow if I feel like it.