Trick or Treat (1986)

October 10, 2018

Directed by: Charles Martin Smith

Written by: Rhet Topham, Michael S. Murphy, Joel Soisson

Starring: Marc Price, Tony Fields, Lisa Orgolini

Quote: "Demonic beasts. Whatever happened to the good old simple love song? "I love you." That's what good words use. Nowadays they have to write some sickness. It's just absoultely sick and bizarre, and I'm going to do my upmost best to try and stop it now."

Trivia: Eddie's best friend Roger is played by Glen Morgan, his only acting stint. Morgan later went on to be a prolific writer/producer for The X-Files (1993), Final Destination (2000), and Final Destination 3 (2006), as well as direct the Black Christmas (2006) remake.


1986. The height of the Reagan Era and the Satanic Panic. It was at this time that parents specifically and society in general were in a moral frenzy that their children were being brainwashed by Satanic cults using heavy metal music, comic books, and really anything else that was cool to turn them into devil worshippers. Two years earlier, a kid committed suicide and the blame was put on Ozzy Osbourne and the subliminal messages that he supposedly put in his song. 20/20 ran weekly exposes warning parents about devil worshippers and pinpointed various heavy metal bands that were associated with Satanism. This would build toward the culmination of the jailing of the West Memphis Three; three innocent high school kids that were imprisoned (one was even on death row) for nearly twenty years for the murder of three children based on the evidence that they were "goth" or "metal" kids (The Last Podcast on the Left does a great show about them). Of course, this whole charade was bullshit that was brought on by fear campaigns by groups hoping to further their own religious and political goals. Or in the case of the media, to simply sell advertisements (shame on you 20/20). Trick or Treat is meant to be a parody of the insanity of that time.

Suburban Gothic (2014)

September 17, 2018

Directed by: Richard Bates Jr.

Written by: Richard Bates Jr., Mark Bruner

Starring: Matthew Gray Gubler, Kat Dennings, Ray Wise

Quote: "It's nothing fifteen or twenty drinks won't fix."

Trivia: Most of the initial cast (including Ray Wise, Jeffrey Combs, Jack Plotnick and Mackenzie Phillips) made guest appearances on the show Criminal Minds (2005), which co-stars Matthew Gray Gubler.






Suburban Gothic is writer/director Richard Bates Jr.'s followup to 2012's Excision. I watched and wrote about Excision a few months ago. It is an incredibly dark look at mental illness and the difficulty of not "fitting in." Plus it has some of the most repulsive scenes in film. In Suburban Gothic, Bates is once again looking at suburban life and the struggle to find one's place in a world that makes no sense, this time as a person in their early twenties. Unlike Excision, Suburban Gothic is a much, much lighter film with a lot of genuinely funny moments and without the unrestrained use of blood and gore (bummer). Matthew Gray Gubler does a tremendous job bringing his character Raymond to life as he struggles to find a purpose in the suburban world that he has no connection to. As if being stuck between childhood and adulthood isn't bad enough, Raymond must also navigate the paranormal world when he discovers that his parents' house is haunted. It is the writing that makes the film a success. The ghosts are secondary to the dialogue and characters which really drive the film.

Hereditary (2018)

August 27, 2018

Directed by: Ari Aster

Written by: Ari Aster

Starring: Toni Collette, Miley Shapiro, Gabriel Byrne

Budget: $10,000,000

Quote: "Well, now your sister is dead! And I know you miss her and I know it was an accident and I know you're in pain and I wish could take that away for you. I WISH I could shield you from the knowledge that you did what you did, but you're sister is dead! She's gone forever!"

Trivia: In an interview, Alex Wolff explains that he wanted to actually break his own nose for the scene where his character slams his head into a desk. When it was time for the scene to be shot, Wolff slams his head into the desk only to discover that the top was foam and the bottom was hard. He dislocated his jaw (which is a previous injury the actor has had) for the scene.

I started this horror journey back in the beginning of July and when asking my friends what horror/scary movies I should watch the two that came up over and over were A Quiet Place and Hereditary. A Quiet Place was good but I think Hereditary is great. It is actually a legitimately scary movie! It's a slow burn so if you are planning on seeing it, give it patience, it more than pays off in the end.

The Fog (1980)

August 5, 2018

Directed by: John Carpenter

Written by: John Carpenter, Debra Hill

Starring: Adrienne Barbeau, Jamie Lee Curtis, Janet Leigh

Budget: $1,000,000

Quotes:  But it is told by the fishermen, and their fathers and grandfathers, that when the fog returns to Antonio Bay, the men at the bottom of the sea, out in the water by Spivey Point will rise up and search for the campfire that led them to their dark, icy death.

Trivia: Although the film cost just over $1 million to make, Avco Embassy spent three times that amount on advertising and promotion. This included TV ads, radio ads, print ads, and the studio even installed fog machines (at a cost of $350 each) in the lobbies of selected cinemas where the film was showing.

I decided to continue my horror sojourn with another John Carpenter film. With Carpenter, you know you are getting something original, unique and fun. This film is no exception. Unlike some of his other films, The Fog is a pretty straight forward ghost story without the twists and turns of some of his other films (having just watched In the Mouth of Madness, that film immediately comes to mind). with all the essential Carpenter elements: John Carpenter score, supernatural elements, Jamie Lee Curtis, great practical effects. Also, the film has the beautiful Adrienne Barbeau thrown in as a bonus!

The Vault (2017)

July 24, 2018

Directed by: Dan Bush

Written by: Dan Bush, Conal Byrne

Starring: James Franco, Taryn Manning, Francesca Eastwood

Budget: $5,000,000

Tagline: No one is safe.

Trivia: Keith Loneker's last movie before he lost his battle with cancer on June 22nd, 2017.







After reading the description on Netflix about a bank heist that goes south when they realize the bank vault is haunted, I decided to give the movie a shot. I realized that of the now fifty one movies I have watched, I have barely watched any haunted/ghost movies. I'm sure if I looked there'd be more but right now I can only remember House (which was not so good). This movie had some great actors and some definitely great scenes but overall it fell kind of flat. The film focuses too much on the family dynamics of the characters and the bank heist itself and the haunted vault is treated as an afterthought. If I had to guess, most of the $5 million budget was spent on the actors instead of the creepy stuff.

Death Bed: The Bed That Eats (1977)

June 29, 2018

Full disclosure: I decided to watch this movie as a goof with some friends expecting it to be garbage that we could riff on. What we got was actually a really fun and interesting film. Filmed with absolutely no budget, the director/writer George Barry (Death Bed was his only film credit listed on IMDB) puts together a really interesting and surreal film about a bed that is possessed by a demon. 

Death Bed is about a demon who falls in love with a woman whom dies on a bed. After the demon accidently bleeds onto the bed, the bed comes to life and eats whomever rests upon it (often after the women in the scene have become topless because hey... you're not going to make a movie about a bed that eats people and not have a little nudity!). The bed also captured a guy who died of tuberculosis and turned him into a painting which talks to the bed. A final group of teenagers stumble upon the bed and it is up to them to stop its murderous rampage.