Top Six Movies Of My Halloween Horror Movie Marathon (at Halloween Candy)

As is often the case when you hurriedly assemble a set of movies you've never seen before (particularly when many of them are fished out of the bargain bin), most of the films I saw during the Halloween Candy horror movie marathon were awful. 31 films and only about 13 that I could realistically call "good". (That's a 42% success rate)  However, finally we have reached the final entry where I have collected the best 6 films (the top 19%) of the marathon.



You can find the rest of the reviews sorted to their varying degrees of awfulness at the following links:
Part one - The worst (Where the failure of Critters 3 to meet up to the promise of the previous sequel leads me into a blind fury - while a number of other horror seriously fail to impress.)
Part two - The pretty bad (Where I'm happily surprised by "I Spit On Your Grave", very disappointed by the original "The Haunting", and moderately irritated by "Saw II".)
Part three - The alright (Where I discover the, admittedly somewhat limited, joys of "Thir13een Ghosts" and am entertained by some creative effects in "Killer Klowns From Outer Space".)
Part four - The pretty good (Where "Critters 2" proves to be an excellent horror comedy sequel, "Quatermass And The Pit" proves to be a great bit of old school sci-fi, and the 'Highlander' director is once again bizarre yet brilliant with his movie "Razorback" about a merciless giant boar.)

6. Death Becomes Her (1992)
A reliable childhood classic. Perhaps not really a horror movie, but definitely featuring a few horror-related themes.


Remembering this back when I first watched it all those years ago I was convinced that it was a horror comedy. I thought it had to be. In some ways the label fits, but in others it doesn't. This is much more clearly comedy than horror, however there is something undoubtedly creepy about the mysterious lady offering eternal life. Bruce Willis' comedy seems somewhat limited by his moustache, but he's great anyway. And the rivalry between Meryl Streep and Goldie Hawn is also really good. This is a great little comedy and I still love it.

A+

5. Cold Prey (2006)
While not really the most original slasher movie I've ever seen, "Cold Prey" (original title "Fritt Vilt") has some really well developed and performed characters. In order for a slasher movie to work, we need to care about the characters and that is where "Cold Prey" delivers in spades. Looking forward to checking out the sequels! :)


Plot Synopsis: A group of skiiers have problems when one of them is injured while skiing in the mountains. Fortunately they find a nearby abandoned hostel. However, while it may have been abandoned, it is not empty.... DUN DUN DUUUUUN!
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4. The Grudge (2004)
This was a bit of a surprise hit. Quite a few of the films I checked out were ghost movies and in the majority of cases I was characteristically unimpressed. "Thir13en Ghosts" and "The Evil Dead" were the only other ghost movies to make it into my top 20. But there was something special about "The Grudge". The unique visual style of the ghosts and the decision not to resolve the story with the protagonists solving the ghosts' 'unfinished business' (a phrase I first heard during the film "Casper"), made it feel like a cut above the rest. Certainly this is a Japanese horror with clear similarities with "Ringu". (I say that the remake is still Japanese horror because they've kept the Japanese director and the story retains its Japanese setting.) Still, I think that "The Grudge" is unique enough not to be classed as a shameless "Ringu" rip-off or cash-in (though it might not be a wholly unreasonable criticism, since the first low budget Ju-On film was released in the same year as Ringu).

I think what I've discovered is that if the ghosts are a kind of monster and follow clear rules then I'm fine, but if you want me to accept a nice ghost you are going to need to shove some humour in there because I'm generally not going to be taking it seriously. If you want my whole catalogue of problems with ghost movies you should check out "What Lies Beneath". Pretty much everything that I hate about ghost films is contained in there.

I've since watched some of the other movies in the "Ju-On" series with mixed results...


Plot Synopsis: American remake of the Japanese horror movie "Ju-On: The Grudge" by the same director. The film still takes place in Japan, but with most characters being American immigrants to Japan. Before the opening of the film we are told that sometimes the rage of the deceased lives on after they die as a curse which harms anyone who comes into contact with them. After an opening involving Bill Pullman, we cut to a young woman acting as a helper for an elderly lady suffering from dementia. However, when the helper checks the room upstairs she discovers something terrible. The film regularly cuts to different characters sometimes jumping back in time a little bit so we get a full sense of events happening simulataneously.

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3. Detention (2011)

The straight-to-DVD horror comedy (including time travel and aliens) "Detention" is now one of my favourite films of the year. The trailer makes it look fairly generic and attempts to explain the plot rarely prepare people for quite how different the film is, but this hyperactive rollercoaster heaped with 80s and 90s references is unlike anything you've seen before. The style is sort of like if "Scott Pilgrim Vs The World" meets "Return Of The Living Dead".


Y'know what? The less you know about "Detention" before you shove in the DVD, the better. The synopsis on IMDB doesn't tell you much and is misleading in what little it tells you. Personally all I knew was that the director was a guest on the Slashfilm podcast, he'd previously directed "Torque" (which I think he's kind of embarrassed about now) and the other people on that podcast admitted (after he'd gone) that they thought the film was pretty cool. So I thought, what the hell, let's shove it on the rental list.

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2. Rare Exports (2010)

I'd been saving this one up for a review closer to Christmas, but when I was having a horror movie night with a friend I couldn't help but recommend it. (Don't worry. I'm amassing some more Christmas-related horror to watch over the Christmas period. :D) It stood up as well as the first time I watched it and I think my friend was fairly impressed.


Plot Synopsis: A businessman employing an American excavation team (who oddly seem to have English accents) believes he has discovered the grave of the original Father Christmas in FInland, apparently buried by the Sami peoples centuries ago. As the excavation is carried out, a local Sami community experience some strange occurrences while one young boy learns the terrifying truth about the real Santa Claus.

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1. Let The Right One In (2008)
Met up with a group of friends for what was supposed to be a scary movie night. Due to some delays at the start, the evening ended up consisting in the episode "Blink" from Doctor Who, the episode "Fear Itself" from season four of Buffy and this film, which I had admittedly seen before. Watching it again, having now read the books it was as captivating as ever. It's a real masterpiece.

Also, vital additional point. Having rewatched this I now simply CANNOT understand people who liked the American remake "Let Me In". Not only did the relationship have less chemistry in the remake and not only were the filmmakers lying through their teeth when they said it was incorporating additional elements from the book (it's less true to the book than ever), but the EFFECTS are less good! It's almost like they shrunk the budget.

(The hyperlinks in this paragrpaph, if they still work, are for clips from the sections of the movies under discussion.) If you check out the "not inviting the vampire in" scene in the remake, it is shot from a distance and all we really see is some blood round the edges while Chole Moretz has her head in her hands. It might as well be depicting a nose bleed. In the original we have close-up shots of everything that is happening to the vampire. Also there's 'the swimming pool scene' (in case it wasn't already obvious, don't check out the hyperlinks unless you don't mind spoilers). While in the original we have a fully lit swimming pool, a fixed camera and we can see everything that happens clearly, in the remake all the lights have been switched off and it's rather hard to work out what is going on as a result. (I'm reminded of "AVP:Requiem" where everything was darkened to hide the poor level of the effects work and this ended up meaning that the audience could barely tell what they were watching half the time.) One friend suggested that the darkness changes the mood and makes the pool seem cold, but my problem with this is that we all know that indoor pools aren't like that. They are always heated, often to the point of being very warm. My point here is simply this. The acting (or at least the direction) is worse, the effects are clearly worse, the filmmakers felt they needed to lie about adaptation decisions, so why on earth does anyone like the remake? *shrugs*

The original still holds a special place in my heart as I explain in the review below....


Rewatched this one recently at a special "spooky movie" night. It's just as wonderful as I remember and there were all sorts of details I missed. *Mild Spoiler warning for the next paragraph*

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Tragic Death In Ireland - Just In Case Anyone Wasn't Sure How Horrible This Is....

... the answer is "pretty damn horrible", okay?

Y'see Ireland has this law whereby abortion is made illegal. It's not actually supposed to include cases where there's a danger to the mother, but that didn't stop the recent ridiculously unnecessary screw-up. The law actually doesn't really so much stop abortions as make them extra specially difficult because anyone who wants one has to travel specially to the UK to get the procedure done. Of course, that's not really feasible when your fully intentional pregnancy has gone awry and you are in a severe condition in an Irish hospital.


This lovely lady is called Savita Halappanavar. She died tragically a week after being admitted to a hospital in Galway where she was found to be miscarrying. For three days she asked for doctors to terminate her pregnancy but this was refused on the grounds that: "This is a Catholic country." Apparently her response that she was neither Irish nor Catholic made no difference to this (she was Indian and Hindu).

Dr. Jen Gunter explains:

...“Miscarrying” at 17 weeks can only mean one of three things:

A) Ruptured membranes
B) Advanced cervical dilation
C) Labor (this is unlikely, although it is possible that she had preterm labor that arrested and left her with scenario B, advanced cervical dilation).

All three of these scenarios have a dismal prognosis, none of which should involve the death of the mother.

Since Savita was told that the doctors would need to wait until the foetal heartbeat stopped before they could intervene, Dr. Gunter has a number of possible explanations, all of which are horrible:

As there is no medically acceptable scenario at 17 weeks where a woman is miscarrying AND is denied a termination, there can only be three plausible explanations for Ms. Hapappanavar’s “medical care” :

1) Irish law does indeed treat pregnant women as second class citizens and denies them appropriate medical care. The medical team was following the law to avoid criminal prosecution.
2) Irish law does not deny women the care they need; however, a zealous individual doctor or hospital administrator interpreted Catholic doctrine in such a way that a pregnant woman’s medical care was somehow irrelevant and superceded by heart tones of a 17 weeks fetus that could never be viable.
3) Irish law allows abortions for women when medically necessary, but the doctors involved were negligent in that they could not diagnose infection when it was so obviously present, did not know the treatment, or were not competent enough to carry out the treatment.

What we do know is that a young, pregnant, woman who presented to the hospital in a first world country died for want of appropriate medical care. Whether it’s Irish Catholic law or malpractice, only time will tell; however, no answer could possibly ease the pain and suffering of Ms. Halappanavar’s loved ones.

And it only gets worse...

This is Senator Ronan Mullen. He's decided to take this moment to announce that: "he hoped protestors outside the Dáil would not use the tragic death of Savita Halappanavar as an argument for legislating for abortion."

Yes, because clearly a woman dying from being denied an abortion is NOT the time to start asking questions about access to abortion, right? No, instead it's the PERFECT TIME to start denouncing any such idea and SHAMING anyone who even dreamt of bringing up the matter, obviously! *facepalm*

(Reminds me of the pro-gun guy who got upset that people were suggesting that the Colorado shootings might indicate that gun control was lacking. But at least he was just some random guy on the internet and not a public figure in a position of authority.)


Meanwhile the minister for health, James Reilly, reckons that it's too early to say whether ties to a Catholic ethos were at fault:

Speaking in the Dáil this evening, he said we "could not pre-judge" the situation, adding he had no evidence to suggest a Catholic ethos at the hospital prevented the pregnant woman's life from being saved by a medical termination.

Okay, fair enough, I suppose that's true. However, if we consider Dr. Gunter's words, Reilly appears to be ignoring the seemingly inevitable consequences of what he's saying here. If the Catholic ethos was not at responsible for this tragedy, either through Ireland's Catholicism-determined anti-abortion law or in through the practices of the medical staff at the hospital, then there is only one possible alternative. That alternative is that the medical staff involved were abysmally and ludicrously incompetent.

In the meantime there are candlelit vigils across Ireland in response to this tragedy. One might have hoped that the Irish authorities would take it a little more seriously.... D':



(Guardian - Ireland should change abortion law)
(Dr. Gunter considers the case)
(Reilly: No evidence Catholic ethos prevented Savita's life from being saved)
(Pharyngula weighs in)
(Images of vigils and protests)